|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
At its best, the musical repertoire known as Lieder, or German art songs, marries great poetry to great music to create intense, confessional art. A successful Lieder collaboration requires a singer and a pianist at the top of their form.
This weekend’s opening recital in Eastman’s Kilbourn Series will present one of the best: tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Paul Lewis have been described by the New York Times as a “Lieder dream team.” Their recital Sunday afternoon is devoted to the most romantic of German Lieder composers, Robert Schumann.
Padmore began his musical journey as a clarinetist, but he says “I didn’t feel I was good enough for a professional career, and I did not want to go to a music college.” His musical skills won him a choral scholarship to Cambridge University, where he received an excellent general education, and began, in his words, “a slow buildup to a singing career.”
At the very beginning of that career, in the 1980s and 1990s, he sang in such top-notch British ensembles as the Cambridge Singers, the Tallis Scholars, and The Sixteen, all favorites of American classical radio listeners. As a soloist, he made a name in Baroque music—Purcell, Rameau, Handel, and J.S. Bach—and in contemporary music, if not in standard opera.
“I’ve always had an eclectic repertoire,” says Padmore, “because not all music suits my voice. I don’t have an Italianate tenor sound, and I don’t sing Wagner, so I only do a certain amount of opera.” Along with outstanding recordings of songs by British composers, he has been acclaimed in the demanding leading roles of Britten’s “Billy Budd,” “The Turn of the Screw,” and “Death in Venice.”
“Musical America” named Padmore vocalist of the year in 2016, and he has been honored as a Commander of the British Empire (as has Lewis). His cultivated tenor voice may not fill huge opera houses, but it is ideal for the song repertoire, one of the most intimate and emotional forms of music.
Padmore didn’t study Lieder repertoire with a singing teacher, he recalls, until he was in his 20s. At that time, he remembers, he was not yet ready to tackle the vocal and emotional demands of singing the core German repertory—the songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Hugo Wolf, and others.
“I didn’t consider myself a Lieder singer until I was about 40,” he says. “I was not ready vocally, or intellectually. To perform Lieder well, you need wide experience in literature, and in life.
“Now, performing Lieder takes up a lot of my time. But the best of them are great music and great poetry, and they continue to reward me.”
Padmore’s explorations of “the best of them” include recordings of the Schubert cycles “Die Schöne Mullerin,” “Winterreise,” and “Schwanengesang,” which have won numerous international awards. Also among the best are the two cycles by Schumann he will sing on Sunday: “Dichterliebe” (A Poet’s Love) and his Op. 39 “Liederkreis” (Song Circle, or Cycle).
These cycles, and many other of Schumann’s songs, were written in 1840 during his engagement to Clara Wieck, which her father opposed so vehemently that the lovers had to sue for permission to marry. After a fraught year, permission was granted, but while writing these songs, Schumann was in an agony of frustration and dread.
In “Dichterliebe,” the “poet” and the lover are Schumann himself. “These songs were love letters to Clara,” says Padmore, but Schumann’s choice of poems by Heinrich Heine—brief, cynical, and often stinging—made them love songs with a difference. They describe a love affair that does not end well and a marriage that doesn’t take place, and end on a pessimistic note of resignation.
“The poet is foretelling a disaster in love,” Padmore explains, “and this was Schumann’s greatest fear. Schumann wrote these songs in the hope of warding it off. Their mood of Sehnsucht, or longing, is powerful.” (Schumann and Clara eventually made it to the altar and were a devoted couple until his death in 1856.)
Contrasted with “Dichterliebe,” Schumann’s Op. 39 “Liederkreis” has a dreamy atmosphere and more complex harmonies. Joseph von Eichendorff’s poems also touch on frustrated romance and explore many more images embedded in 19th-century German romanticism, such as moonlight, communion with nature, and the legend of the Lorelei, who enticed men to their deaths in the Rhine River. (Padmore and Lewis will also perform four Schumann songs to Hans Christian Andersen poems, which sustain the “love will not end well” mood and even quote a song from “Liederkreis.”)
In both cycles, the composer gives much of the expression to the pianist.
“Clara Schumann was, of course, also a great pianist,” says Padmore, “and many of these songs have extended preludes and postludes. They’re almost like piano pieces with the voice added.”
Schumann’s elaborate piano parts will be in the hands of Lewis, a prominent British pianist particularly known for his playing of the sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert. Lewis began collaborating with Padmore about 20 years ago, and they have performed frequently together.
The singer has collaborated with several other famous pianists, including Mitsuko Uchida, Imogen Cooper, and Jonathan Biss (who will appear with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in October).
“They are amazing in all the great solo piano repertoire, which of course includes music by Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms,” says Padmore. “Often, they’ve admitted to me that they hardly knew the Lieder repertoire. But they soon see that this is also great music, and it soon becomes a favorite.”
The song recital is one of classical music’s most intimate and rewarding experiences, but Padmore points out that “the song recital as we know it didn’t exist until later in the 19th century.”
In fact, Schumann never heard a complete performance of “Dichterliebe.” The first was in 1868, with none other than Johannes Brahms at the piano.
A century and more later, the Lieder recital is often considered a “hard sell” by promoters. Padmore thinks one reason to non-Germans may be the language barrier: “Audiences can be daunted by the prospect of an entire evening of one person singing in another language.”
Printed song texts can help, but Padmore goes further. “I must be a master of the texts, in order to convey their emotion and meaning,” he says. “I have found that I actually can communicate something of these even to someone who doesn’t know the language.”
Performing Lieder in intimate venues, like London’s Wigmore Hall, or Kilbourn Hall, also helps. “I like to be able to look out and take the measure of the room, with the audience in front of me,” he says. “I want to look into everybody’s eyes.
“With these songs, the aim is always to communicate.”
The opening concert in the Kilbourn Concert Series features Mark Padmore, tenor, and Paul Lewis, piano, in an all-Schumann program at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 28, in Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music. For more information and tickets go here.
That evening, both artists will present master classes: Mark Padmore at 6:30 p.m. in Kilbourn Hall, Paul Lewis at 8 p.m. in Hatch Recital Hall. Both are open to the public, with free admission.
David Raymond is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].