What makes for an emotionally compelling song recital? Putting one’s finger on why baritone Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber’s Wigmore Hall recital was so intensely absorbing is tricky... but captivating it certainly was.
Gerhaher does not strike an immediately confident pose on stage, yet his voice has a directness that immediately grabs attention. Beginning with Elis, three short piano nocturnes by Heinz Holliger, Gerhaher also recited Georg Trakl’s short poems that inspired them. He immediately drew us into the dark, introspective world that would pervade the programme to come. Huber’s glassy, ethereal playing, with layered pedalling also set a darkly atmospheric scene.
There were moments of sheer vocal power, but few and far between, carrying all the greater impact. So the heartfelt high cry on “Himmel” in Robert Schumann’s Requiem, or the chilling “Fels genagelt”, and the fierce crescendo on “Herz” in Holliger’s Lunea, had additional shock value because of their rarity. It’s as if Gerhaher knows we know he can deliver, so why overuse it?
Texts by Nikolaus Lenau dominated the programme. He ended his days in an asylum, as did Schumann and Hugo Wolf, whilst Trakl died of an overdose, following distress from treating wounded soldiers. And Othmar Schoeck’s Elegie came after the end of a significant affair. You sense a theme here... insanity, sadness and torment all permeate the texts, and consequently the settings, most strikingly in Holliger’s Lunea.
Composed for Gerhaher in 2013, Lunea is not a comfortable listen. Holliger makes use of extended piano techniques, with interior plucking, scraping and even a pull of wire against the strings. There are sudden outbursts from both singer and pianist, and strange melismata on isolated syllables, high floating moments as well as low moaning chant. This is spread across 22 snippets of Lenau’s writings, made during his final asylum years. Gerhaher delivered the twistingly tormented, leaping lines with remarkable, chilling clarity, with striking stillness on stage, oblivious to Huber’s frequent forays into the piano’s interior. This is not showy, firework madness, it is internal, disturbing and personal.
Wolf’s Abendbilder are less immediately challenging, yet despite greater warmth, there is urgency and darkness, particularly in the piano. Gerhaher’s diction and projection was precise, with a moment of sweetness in the final meadow scene on “dort”, as the shepherd innocently contemplates the falling sun. Schoeck’s settings are more ominous, with dark, winding harmonies and lugubrious melodies. Here Gerhaher gave us pleading, icy tones, and the final journey of Herbstentschluss dripped with sadness, before the heartbreaking Welke Rose, Huber’s soft-toned accompaniment in the distance.
Schumann’s Vier Husarenlieder initially seem like lighter territory, with hints of a drinking song in the opening “traras”. But Gerhaher shifted from humour to darker sarcasm, and even anger in the nostalgia of Den grünen Zeigern. But it was with the Sechs Gedichte von N Lenau that Gerhaher truly tugged the heartstrings. Words were exquisitely pointed in Meine Rose, with a wishful blossoming on “freudig”. Despite some gloriously ringing tone at the top of his range, he returned to oppressive darkness for Einsamkeit. Schumann added Requiem to the set as he thought Lenau had already died. His setting of a poem by Dreves, with its opening line “Ruh’ von schmerzensreichen” (rest from pain-wracked toil) was his tribute to Lenau, but stands here as a plea for Schumann himself, the other composers and writers represented in tonight’s programme, and perhaps as a wider tribute to all those in mental turmoil.
The short encore, Zweifelnder Wunsch, another of Schoeck’s Lenau settings from the Elegie, despite its sweetness, could not wipe away the evening’s powerful sense of tragedy.
