In the nearly 200 years since the death of Franz Schubert at the age of only 31, “humanity has evolved,” according to Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen whose exquisite Lieder recital proved the stand-out event of the Aldeburgh Festival’s opening weekend. Schubert’s world, as the Lieder attest and Davidsen explained, was freighted with loss: early death from what are now preventable diseases, the cruel loss of children in infancy. Not for nothing were the Romantic poets obsessed with morbid fantasies, ghouls and portents.
Davidsen, who earlier in the day tutored a masterclass as part of the new Festival Academy, had made an inspired selection around themes of hope, love and grief, delivered to perfection. From playfulness to grandeur, from lustrous poise to frenetic obsession, Davidsen found an apparently limitless supply of vocal colours with which she painted a series of vivid pictures. A peerless musical storyteller, she brought a new freshness and authenticity to Schubert’s songs and a very contemporary sensibility to bear on the content of the poetry.
“All the encounters we have in our life, Schubert has a song about,” she offered. And though it might be a while since most of the Snape Maltings audience felt the all-engulfing power of a first kiss, the perennial promise of spring can never fail to cheer, just as the dark clouds of self-deception unnerve and unsettle. The sound of water was a unifying theme in this selection, from the busy Am Bach im Fruhling to Auf dem See, or its nearest domestic equivalent, the spinning wheel in Gretchen am Spinnrade.
James Baillieu is an acutely sensitive and sympathetic accompanist, although that term is somewhat inadequate for the role in Schubert’s work. Baillieu’s deceptive lightness of touch kept his fingers dancing over the keys, even in Erlkönig, which the duo took at a terrific lick. In that and in Der Tod und das Mädchen, Davidsen chillingly made the voice of death so sweet and beguiling that surrender to it was within touching distance. The programme ended with a breathtakingly poignant Am Tage Aller Seelen, the final bars delivered in a gossamer pianissimo.
Although two centuries have passed since Schubert set this poetry of extremes to music, the surprise of this programme, rich in Davidsen’s velvety Sehnsucht and Baillieu’s agile thrill, was to come away reflecting that we still need look no further than Europe to see young people rejoicing in first love – and lost before their time.
Eleanor’s press trip was funded by Britten Pears Arts
