Sometimes the musical scene of a city is filled with amusing coincidences. Within the framework of a Lied series currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, Nathalie Stutzmann appeared before the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid to perform Schubert’s Winterreise. She did so shortly after singing, at the Auditorio, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with David Afkham, who has already conquered the Madrid audience months before officially becoming the Principal Conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra. The poems from Mathilde Wesendonck were deeply influenced by Wilhelm Müller, whose words Schubert turned into the last complete cycle he would compose in his brief life. In turn, the music Wagner composed for his beloved’s poems is full of musical thoughts later to be found in Tristan und Isolde. The opera – or the “action” (“Handlung”), as the composer referred to it – is currently playing at the Madrid Opera House (and the Backtrack review is here), in what closes an invisible circle of mischievous concurrences.
Stutzmann and the pianist Inger Södergren have a long track in making music together. They have toured Europe and recorded, among others, Winterreise. Their mutual understanding and their synchronicity are evident. They are at ease with each other, and barely need to make eye contact to know when a pause ends or how long a cadence lasts. A good example of this was their complicity when performing “Auf dem Flusse”. Such complicity held true even in a performance that was overall irregular, the lows mainly coming from the keyboard rather than the voice. There is no Winterreise without the piano committing to the journey too. Södergren however never took off. She was a faithful accompanist, but this is not what Schubert intended his piano to be.