Monday, January 14, 2019

A Liederabend for Poets Heine and Rückert

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances (SFP) presented the one concert in its The Art of Song Series based entirely on the liederabend tradition. The program consisted entirely of setting of poems by Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Rückert. The Rückert settings were by Gustav Mahler, while Heine’s poems were set by both Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. The vocalist was English tenor Mark Padmore, accompanied at the piano by Paul Lewis. This is the second time that Padmore and Lewis performed for SFP as a duo.

The title page of Heine’s first published collection of poems, which includes his Lyrisches Intermezzo (photograph by H.-P. Haack, taken in his private library, from Wikimedia Commons, used with the photographer’s permission)

The major work on the program was Schumann’s Opus 48 Dichterliebe (a poet’s love). The texts come from Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo, structured as a Prologue followed by 65 poems. Schumann extracted twenty poems from this collection, organizing them around a narrative of unrequited love. The songs were composed in 1840, but when the cycle was first published by Peters in 1844, only sixteen of the settings were included; and that remains the version in which Dichterliebe is usually performed. Last night, however, Padmore restored the four deleted songs, inserting them were they would enrich the overall flow of the narrative.

Those familiar with Opus 48 would have recognized the insertions, but it took following the text sheet to appreciate more thoroughly the logic behind Padmore’s restoration. Two of the poems prolong the poet’s expression of his love, while the other two are part of the decent into despair following rejection. The cycle still ends with the last of the Lyrisches Intermezzo poems, in which the poet puts the “old, wicked songs” into a huge coffin cast into the sea by twelve giants. That final song captures the epitome of an observation that Padmore made at the beginning of the evening: even when Heine’s poems begin with traditional lyricism, there is almost always the sting of sarcasm in his final lines.

Padmore knew exactly how to capture all of Heine’s sharp edges without ever overplaying any of them. However, it is through that strong contrast between light and dark that one can appreciate Padmore’s decision to restore the four poems that Schumann originally deleted. The overall flow of the narrative has been enriched, and that enrichment adds an extra bite to Heine’s sarcastic turns of phrase.

However, because Schumann’s “element” was the piano, Padmore was also gracious enough to remind the audience that flow of the narrative depends as much on the “interstitial” (my word choice, not Padmore’s!) reflections in solo piano passages as it does on what the words are and how they have been set. Since Lewis is primarily a recitalist and concerto soloist, his partnership with Padmore ensures that the significance of those piano passages does not pass unnoticed. The result was a highly informed account of Heine’s texts presented in a context in which vocalist and pianist are collaborating partners.

The Schumann selection occupied the entire second half of the program. That program begin with Brahms’ setting of five Heine poems taken from three of his publications, Opus 71, Opus 85, and Opus 96. These were all relatively brief offerings (which tends to be the case with most of Brahms’ song settings). Each offered a straightforward delivery of the text, reinforced with a clear awareness of those sharp-edged “punch lines.” The idea of beginning the program with small, but still penetrating, “doses” of poetry made for an excellent “warm-up,” preparing listeners for the more extended efforts that would follow.

Mahler’s so-called Rückert-Lieder were originally part of the published collection Sieben Lieder aus letzter Zeit (seven songs of latter days). The Rückert settings were composed in 1901 and 1902, and the other two songs were two of Mahler’s earliest settings of poems from Das Knaben Wunderhorn. The entire collection was not published until 1910. Mahler composed settings for both orchestra and piano accompaniment. The only exception is the setting of the Rückert poem “Liebst du um Schönheit,” which was only orchestrated by Max Puttmann after Mahler’s death.

While Mahler is best known for his orchestral writing, the piano versions can be as richly expressive when in the hands of the right pianist. Mahler is at his most orchestral, so to speak, in “Um Mitternacht” (at midnight hour), which requires four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and harp. These resources are not deployed until the final verse of the poem, yet Lewis managed to create an equally effective impact solely through his control of dynamics and phrasing. Working as a team, Padmore and Lewis made a convincing case that Mahler can have as much impact in a recital hall as he can with the full extent of his orchestral resources.

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