United States Various: Lise Davidsen (soprano), Malcolm Martineau (piano). Cal Performances, Zellerbach Hall, University of California Berkeley. 4.2.2025. (HS)
Grieg – ‘Dereinst, Gedanke mein’, ‘Zur Rosenzeit’, ‘Ein Traum’
Purcell – ‘Dido’s Lament’ from Dido and Aeneas
Verdi – ‘Tu che le vanità’ from Don Carlo
R. Strauss – ‘Es gibt ein Reich’ from Ariadne auf Naxos; ‘Befreit’, Op,39 No.5
Schubert – ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’, ‘Der Zwerg’, ‘Du bist die Ruh’, ‘Ellens dritter Gesang’ (‘Ave Maria’)
Wagner – ‘Allmächt’ge Jungfrau’ from Tannhäuser; ‘Der Engel’, ‘Träume’ from Wesendonck Lieder; ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan und Isolde
For a vocal recital that centered on songs and arias about death, Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen managed to create a remarkably upbeat aura. In greeting the audience in a nearly-full Zellerbach Hall after an opening set of three songs from her countryman Edward Grieg’s Op.48, she characterized the program lightly as a ‘a little bit of everything’.
Indeed, the composers on this evening ranged from Henry Purcell to Richard Strauss, with Giuseppe Verdi, Franz Schubert and Richard Wagner along the way. But virtually the entire program was about death. Maybe it was the bright, flowery gown she wore for the first half, but it only dawned on me after she led into the intermission with Strauss’s ‘Befreit’, an uncharacteristically (for Strauss) downbeat song about a couple finding bliss as ‘death comes tomorrow’.
Clad in black with her hair pulled back, she opened the second half with a set of four Schubert songs, beginning with ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’ (‘Death and the Maiden’), delivered with appropriate sonority and without dragging the pace to underline the peace that can accompany death. ‘Der Zwerg’ followed, a song about a dwarf ambivalent about murdering his queen, an estranged lover, sung with a bard’s sense of rhythm. The set concluded with a gorgeous ‘Ave Maria’ – not the Catholic prayer we all know but a maiden’s anguished plea amid a deadly clan war.
One of the evening’s highlights was Schubert’s ‘Du bist die Ruh’, a spellbinding performance in which both pianist and singer found a pace that seemed separate from time. It also provided some balm amid so much about people passing away.
For ‘Tu che la vanità’, from Verdi’s opera Don Carlo, she pulled out all the stops, intoning the regal opening statement with a broad yet probing tone, finding different shadings as the long aria moved from appreciation of France to praise of Carlo (and God).
From the top, it was the command of her voice — here powerful, there sublimely subtle and soft — that painted the colors of every phrase, both musical and lyrical. A knack for shaping the vowel sounds so perfectly went a long way toward carrying the meaning of words.
Each of the three Grieg songs began by painting a lovely picture, shaped with a fetching legato. She only reached for her impressively rich full voice as the music swelled. In ‘Dido’s Lament’, she used no vibrato yet somehow found rich vocal tone to make Purcell’s aria achingly expressive.
Pianist Malcolm Martineau shone best in the more intimate art songs with a superb attention to detail, but he gamely stood in for an orchestra in the opera arias. Once the soprano started singing in the Verdi aria, the tinkling sound of the piano didn’t matter, but Strauss’s ‘Des gibt ein Reich’, the big dramatic soprano aria from Ariadne auf Naxos, didn’t have enough rhythmic pulse from the piano to overcome a heroic performance by the soprano.
In the art song ‘Befreit’, the wistfulness was missing amid a weighty delivery, impressive but not quite what the song was about. All these details, so enchanting early on, were getting to be wearisome.
Strauss and Wagner are composers who highlight Davidsen’s work on the opera stage. The final set, all Wagner, began with ‘Allmächt’ge Jungfrau’ from Tannhaüser, Elisabeth’s prayer asking of God the mercy the Pope has denied the title character. Clearly Davidsen’s stage history with the role paid dividends in the depths she found. The two Wesendonck songs – ‘Der Engel’ and ‘Träume’ – had their strengths as well.
Concluding the program was ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde – a role she has yet to do. She certainly has the vocal assets to be a great Isolde, but this run-through struck my ears as a work in progress. In a way, it characterized all the things that were great about the recital, and some that were not.
The vocal sound was miraculous. Breath control made musical passages with long legato delicious. Her range dipped into low notes with intensity and warmth, and sounded high notes without ever sliding into them, even after a long night of singing. She could back off a loud note and fade it into a beautiful pianissimo.
She prefaced ‘Liebestod’ by admitting that this was her first public performance of the iconic work. And it was a thorough demonstration of all the vocal arrows in her quiver. But what Wagner created, and what the best interpreters of this work have done, is to emphasize the long legato arc. She did not. It started well, the opening lines emerging as dreamily soft, but the colors changed so often that it lost cohesion. The ending, instead of drifting away like a long sunset, winked out too fast.
There’s no doubt Davidsen has all the tools, musical and dramatic, to make a great Isolde, even if this wasn’t it.
The encore brought back the characteristics and understanding of the text that made it so. ‘Schmerzen’ (‘Agony’) from the Wesendonck Lieder fit into the theme but found a note of hope in these lines from the penultimate verse: ‘Why should I complain/If the sun itself must despair/If the sun itself must set?’
It, along with the sheer majesty of one of the world’s great dramatic soprano voices, justified the standing ovation the evening received.
Harvey Steiman