Dorothea Roschmann & Julius Drake at Carnegie Hall, April 12, 2010

Reviewed by Bill Breakstone, Somers, New York

The lieder recital by soprano Dorothea Roschmann and pianist Julius Drake was originally scheduled for November of 2009, but due to the soprano’s illness was postponed to this April date. The pianist in November was to be Graham Johnson, who was unavailable for the April date, and his place was taken by Julius Drake.
The program consisted of songs by Robert Schumann, Gustav Mahler and Hugo Wolf. We are commemorating the 200th birthday of both Robert Schumann and Frederic Chopin in 2010, both being born in 1810. Among his many masterpieces, Schumann was responsible for numerous art songs, at the heart of the lieder repertoire. Chopin produced many masterpieces, but his apex was in the solo piano literature. Not as well known is that the year 2010 also marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of both Gustav Mahler and his contemporary Hugo Wolf. Mahler’s compositions included both symphonic forms, which he pushed almost to the limit of post-romantic form, and also lieder that were set to orchestral accompaniment, but often performed in piano reductions.
Wolf was another master of the lied, his major musical accomplishment. He ventured into operatic writing, but not successfully. It is ironic that these two great musicians intertwined in that respect. Mahler became the music director of The Vienna Hofoper in 1898. His sister Justi’s closest friend was Natalie Bauer-Lechner, who became a confidant of the newly appointed director. Natalie was also a proponent of the music of Wolf, who had written the opera Der Corregidor. She pressured Mahler to produce this opera at the Hofoper. Mahler agreed to review the score, and, should he deem it worthy, mount a production. Unfortunately, for Wolf, Mahler rejected the score, leading to a permanent rift between the two composers.
Nonetheless, Wolf’s compositional stature survived, but almost solely as a writer of lieder. In that regard, he is considered as one of the great composers of that genre, alongside Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler and others. Thus Monday’s program presented works of two of the masters of that art form.
It is interesting to trace the development of the lied, which dates back to the early 15th century, though in a form that would be nearly impossible to recognize in retrospect. Lied came into its own beginning with the songs of Haydn and Mozart in the late 1700s, and more so with the extended forms used by Beethoven in his Adelaide and An die ferne Gelibte. Grove’s states that lied is a marriage of text and music. The music must enrich the poetic text, and as the form developed into a pairing of vocal and pianistic lines, the intertwining of both of the artists came to assume an equal partnership. This development was gradual, but starting with Schubert, followed by Mendelssohn and Schumann, the collaboration materialized to become the art form that lovers of the genre now hold so dear to their hearts. Again Groves: “Less pictorially inclined than Schubert, Schumann can, with his acute literary sense, respond to a poem’s essence, whether with the irony that he found in Heine, sometimes the pain of the beloved happy in another’s arms, or the subtleties of Eichendorff, with Romantic evocations of a bygone age or of the darker aspects of the natural world. The piano again plays a crucial role, sometimes continuing the song after the voice has ceased.”
That is exactly what we heard last night in the first half of this wonderful lieder recital, indeed during the entire program. Quite a lot of Schumann’s lieder have been performed this season. Just the other evening here in New York, the bass-baritone Thomas Hampson and pianist Wolfram Reiger presented the original manuscript version of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Op. 48, which included four songs that were subsequently posthumously published as part of Op. 127 and 142, but which were originally intended to be part of the cycle.
The second half of the recital included the soprano excerpts from Mahler’s Das Knaben Wunderhorn, and Hugo Wolf’s Songs from Gedichte von Eduard Morike. The Mahler lied are of a different lot from the Schumann and Wolf lieder. They are folk-inspired, part of a set of some twenty lied written for soprano, bass-baritone and duets for both vocalists, originally composed for voices and orchestra. The entire set is an absolute gem. The Wolf songs are part of his extensive output, and just a sampling of the genius that the composer achieved in the form. The evening ended with two encores: Schumann’s “Waldesgesprach,” Op. 39, No. 3; and Wolf’s “In der Fruhe”
The performances last evening by Roschmann and Drake were all one who loves this art form could wish for. This soprano has a voice that is on the darker side of the soprano range, yet still not a mezzo. She is a true lieder interpreter, with acting abilities that convey the intense feelings of the poetry, and a musicality that is simply natural and cannot be learned. And Julius Drake is among those great collaborators that can rise to equal standing with such a fine vocalist. We have been blessed with many artists such as he; I always go back to the likes of Gerald Moore, Dalton Baldwin and Gonzalo Soriano. But today we have artists such as Drake, Malcolm Martineau, Martin Katz, Brian Zeger, James Levine, and Daniel Barenboim, all of who are perfect partners for the vocalist they share the stage with.
Whenever I hear artistry of this level, Schubert’s song An Die Music comes to mind. It is homage to the art of song, simple, heart-felt and says everything that one who loves this art form must feel: “To art divine!”