San Francisco Performances opened its season with an all-Schumann program, performed by tenor Mark Padmore & pianist Paul Lewis. I am always happy to hear all three gentlemen.
The first half opened with the Four Hans Christian Andersen Lieder, Opus 40, followed by Liederkreis, Opus 39; after the intermission (which Padmore charmingly referred to in the British way as "the interval"), we had Dichterliebe, Opus 48 – as the opus numbers might tell you, all 33 songs we heard were composed in roughly the same period: according to the program, 1840, the year Schumann finally managed to marry Clara Wieck. Despite the officially happy circumstances of the composer's life at the time, many of these songs are haunted & afflicted with loss. Make of that what you will; of course there is the old warning about answered prayers, but the inner creative impulses of the artist don't always reflect his outer circumstances, even for the Romantics. How could anyone expect something titled Dichterliebe – poet's love – to be straightforwardly happy?
After the opening Andersen lieder, Padmore spoke briefly about the affinity Schumann felt for the writings of that odd spinner of tales. He also mentioned that Schumann was basically a pianist, & we should think of the songs not as verse set to music but as music with words attached. The pellucid playing of Lewis was indeed a highlight of the evening, sparkling & insightful.
With his finely etched features & patriarchal silver beard, Padmore looks like a High Gothic sculpture of one of the prophets, which lends an interesting dimension to some of the songs, such as the solemn conjuration of Cologne Cathedral in Dichterliebe. It seemed to me, with my very limited knowledge of German, that he pointed the words with expressive power, plaintive when needed, thundering on occasion. (I would very much like to hear him sing a program entirely in English.) The usual adjective applied to British tenors, reedy, doesn't seem out of place; I find it a pleasing quality. And though I have heard these songs sung with more plush tones, given the intellectual & aesthetic integrity & emotional commitment displayed here, the merely plush can seem almost a limitation of what the music contains.
As Padmore pointed out, it's difficult to come up with an encore that could follow Dichterliebe, so he sang one of the four songs that were strangely omitted form the official compilation: Dien Angesicht.
I found it all very satisfying, though the woman behind me managed to make astonishing amounts of noise with her program. I really don't understand this. All the songs are printed there, in the order in which they're sung. Why the endless flipping, folding, searching, creasing, crackling? What is so hard to find? As I was leaving, I heard her say to someone, "That was a nice way to end the week" so I felt kind of bad about my irritation.
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