Prégardien and Schiff: recitalist as revenant in Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin

Wigmore Hall must have witnessed many performances of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, if not many like this one from pianist Sir András Schiff and tenor Julian Prégardien. Schiff was in his usual concert attire, but Prégardien was in casual clothing, a blue-grey shirt with open collar and dark trousers. That, and his physical manner, hinted less at the recitalist than the revenant, come from his watery grave to impart the romantic tragedy of his passing. Then there was the vividness of his narration; his wandering, a companionable brook, a lovely maid of the mill, his love and ensuing loss – first of the girl, then of his sanity and then his life. This all seemed to unfold before us through the familiar score.

Except it was not exactly the familiar score. Vocal recitalists of Schubert’s day took scores as an invitation to display their own musicianship with Veränderungen und Manieren (“alterations and ornamental embellishments”). Baritone Johan Michael Vogl, a leading singer of Schubert’s songs, routinely made such alterations (which Schubert approved, mostly). These changes were published in Diabelli’s 1830 edition of the cycle. Only decades later, when Schubert and his Lieder had been canonised, did protest arise, and ‘cleaner’ texts appeared. But those printed embellishments show us how Lieder were sung earlier in the century, when they were still new music.

Prégardien used a range of such effects, never overdone, with just the right amount of variation and with good musical taste. Thus the strophic songs such as Morgengrüß benefited from subtle variations in later verses, and the ensuing Des Müllers Blumen (also strophic) gained an especially effective melismatic flourish at its end. The singing was immaculate, alluring in tone and with a seamless legato in the lyrical moments. Perhaps those embellishments arose from study of early editions and the few surviving portions of autograph, yet it all ended up sounding quite spontaneous. Sometimes even pitch was varied at a repeat, and final cadences were decorated in ways far from formulaic.

That all requires the collaboration of the accompanist, of course, and Sir András Schiff was expert at subtly delaying the end of a verse or a song’s final cadence momentarily to allow space for the singer’s invention. His delightful-sounding fortepiano was another element in evoking the cycle’s first performances, as was his agility in the passages where the figuration suggests the brook’s murmuring or the turning of the mill-wheel. The tempi were well chosen to do justice to such incidental details, as well as to convey the sense of the text. Thus Mein! was daringly fast, the lighter action of the fortepiano allowing a rattling swiftness, the tenor’s frantic insistence suggesting the mill-maid’s surrender is a hopeless illusion – does he really believe this? The cycle requires, and received from Prégardien, quite a varied and engaged emotional response. He was certainly angry at the intrusive hunter in Der Jäger, and his resignation in the last songs to his approaching suicide was infinitely poignant. 

The final song, Des Baches Wiegenlied can – heresy alert! – outstay its welcome, often playing for six and a half minutes, much the longest in the cycle. In Prégardien’s recent recording (with a different accompanist) it is very slow, lasting 7'44"! But this Wigmore Hall account lasted exactly five minutes. The brook is singing a cradle song, and this tempo emphasised its rocking motion. It was one of many persuasive details in a moving, and warmly acclaimed, performance.