Oskar Kokoschka’s 1912 “Portrait of Alma Mahler” (public domain, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, from a Wikipedia Web page)
Last night at Old First Presbyterian Church, soprano Jill Morgan Brenner performed in the first of the three Old First Concerts events planned for this month. She was accompanied at the piano by Alexander Katsman in a program entitled An Evening of German Lied. The first half began with Franz Schubert’s D. 118 “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” one of his earliest compositions (as can be seen from the catalog number). This was followed by Richard Wagner’s collection of five songs commonly known as Wesendonck Lieder. (The texts were poems by Mathilde Wesendonck.) The second half of the program began with three of the five songs by Alma Mahler that were published in 1924 but were composed much earlier, before her first encounter with Gustav Mahler. This was coupled with Four Last Songs, composed by Richard Strauss at the age of 84 but not published until after his death.
These were all impressive undertakings, bearing the promise of a highly engaging evening. Sadly, that promise was not fulfilled. Brenner clearly felt strongly about all of her selections, but her delivery was consistently uneven through the entire program. It almost seemed as if she was still struggling to get all the notes in place, leaving little room for the expressiveness behind any of the musical phrases. The overall plan to survey the many aspects of German texts set to music was a good one. However, Brenner’s approaches to interpretation were too uneven to encourage the listener to explore those aspects. German art song deserves better.
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