Schubert, Mahler, Brahms, Schumann, and Liszt are names known and celebrated within the world of lieder; Christian Immler and Helmut Deutsch are hoping to add a few more to the list. The celebrated bass baritone and collaborative pianist are set to release Be Still My Heart (Alpha Classics) featuring the music of Robert Gund (1865-1927) and Wilhelm Grosz (1894-1939), two composers whose oeuvres have been largely overlooked. This isn’t the first time Immler and Deutsch have highlighted the work of unknown composers. The pair released Hidden Treasure (BIS Records) in 2021, which shone a light on the work of composer Hans Gál. At the time of its release Immler wrote in Gramophone that “(r)eading through and rehearsing music which hasn’t ‘become sound’ for more than a century is for me a powerful combination of curiosity, pioneer spirit and obligation. One is indeed living history!” That spirit of exploration continues with Be Still My Heart, which, amidst its thirty-three tracks, hosts several world-premiere recordings – not a small achievement given the sheer volume and consistently high quality of its respective composers’ output.
Portrait of Robert Gund by Ludwig Michalek, around 1921. Private collection.
Swiss-born Gund (who used the more French “Gound” for a time before changing it in 1916) enjoyed an illustrious career in Vienna, where, over the course of three decades as a singing and harmony teacher, he built a considerable reputation as both an educator (Alma Mahler was among his students) and composer. He created many works (especially songs) – but also destroyed many, including a symphony, a piano concerto, and an original opera. German writer/musicologist Ernst-Jürgen Dreyer contributed album notes to a 1986 Jubilate vinyl release of songs featuring soprano Franziska Hirzel and pianist Ilona Sándor, andnoted that “(f)ew people … suspected that the modest and amiable man known in all salons, father of a family rich in sons, pianist in countless chamber music pieces, sought-after song accompanist and organiser of ‘music jours’ and ‘student productions’, not only had something to add to the songs of the moderns as a composer, but that he surpassed them with genuine song talent.”
In his opening for the liner notes to Be Still My Heart, multi-award-winning producer Michael Haas (who is also the co-founder of Vienna-based exil.arte) quotes a 1905 essay by critic Julius Korngold that savages the contemporaneous state of Viennese lieder while notably singling out Gund for praise; Haas goes on to weigh the reasons behind Gund’s gradual disappearance in music, noting his unique position in Vienna at that time:
… his compositions, as confirmed by Julius Korngold, presented a reliable oasis of stability, offering beauty and inventiveness within the bounds of received convention. Unfortunately, “received convention” was not a priority in the early days Viennese Modernism.
(Michael Haas, Be Still My Heart, 2025)
Wilhelm Grosz, twenty-nine years Gund’s junior, was born in Vienna and schooled by a wide range of composers, Franz Schreker among them. Grosz would go on to become the artistic manager of the Ultraphone Gramophone company in Berlin before leading the Kammerspiele Theater in Vienna, though he was forced to flee Austria in 1934. After a short stay in the UK, the composer (who used a number of pseudonyms) moved to New York with plans to continue on to Hollywood, joining other exiled European artists – but he died of a massive heart attack in 1939. His considerable output includes orchestral works, chamber music, film scores, music for two ballets, and three operas; his work would go on to be covered by a range of artists including Frank Sinatra and The Beatles. Haas contextualizes the presence of Grosz within a Viennese progressivism that is more wide than it may first appear, observing the composer’s “metamorphosis from Viennese fin de siècle, to songs for German cinema before teaming up with Billy Kennedy in London under the pseudonyms Will Gross, André Milos, Hugh Williams or Hugh Grant for hits still popular today such as “Isle of Capri” or “Harbour Lights.””
Be Still My Heart celebrates this range by offering a wide array of sounds and experiences. The album, recorded in early 2023 at Munich’s BR-Funkhaus, conveys a deep respect for history alongside a passionate embrace of innovation. With texts by a wide range of writers (including Hesse, Brentano, Morgenstern, Lenau, and Rilke) the album skillfully explores aspects of love, loss, longing, memory, and identity, with a keen sensitivity belying its academic roots. Be Still My Heart is three-dimensional, textured, real, raw, cutting – rooted in a near-forgotten history indeed, but utterly, unmistakably alive with a palpable and timeless passion.
The album is also a showcase for Immler’s intense timbral shading and Deutsch’s intuitive, poetic playing; their interplay, so clear in works like Gund’s “Julinacht” and “Nachts”, or Grosz’s “Helle, sommerliche Nacht” and “Schicksal”, serve to highlight the pair’s clear creative chemistry and near-psychic musical connection. My recent exchange with Christian Immler and Helmut Deutsch touched on forgotten and found histories, the challenges of unknown work (not least in playing it), the joys of long-term collaboration, and what it means to be on the same page in terms of artistic curiosity.
“A Distinct Musical Language”
Why do you think Robert Gund’s work is so largely unknown now?
HD It’s quite unbelievable that his work is so completely forgotten. Here is a man who had performed his own symphony in the Vienna Musikverein, who was close to Mahler and before that to Brahms; he was really in the music world of Vienna in those years. But we don’t know what happened.
CI We are baffled by his music being so unknown, but there are a few theories. Helmut and I have been like detectives through the years, finding and recording unusual repertoire alongside well-known works; in those instances we were usually lucky if we got ten good songs from our investigations – but Gund wrote hundreds of songs, many of them in absolute top quality, so we really had a hard time choosing what to feature on this album – I think that’s the best compliment we can give him.
Halls will often skew their programming toward box office, especially now – “We know we can sell tickets to star names and/or Schumann/Schubert/Mahler” – and everyone else is ignored – maybe that thinking played a role also?
HD Well that’s right, and it’s worth noting that amidst those names Gund really cultivated his own language – a distinct musical language – from them; some parts of his work remind me of Brahms a little bit, but there are things in his writing which you cannot compare easily to any other composer of his time.
Yet he destroyed some of his early works, didn’t he?
HD Yes, in his very young years, he had written a symphony and a piano concerto – which he burned.
CI I wrote to the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music) in Vienna, and I really tried to learn more. I mean, for that kind of a destruction, you don’t have to only destroy your piano part, you have to destroy all the orchestral parts – and absolutely everything seems to be really, really gone. So he really meant it when he burned his own work – but it cannot have been bad if it was premiered at the same time as Zemlinsky’s symphony, right?
Zemlinsky was just one of his many music contacts, is that right?
CI Yes – along with composing, Gund had been the archivist of the Tonkünstlerverein association founded by Schoenberg in Vienna, and he had been Alma Mahler’s counterpoint teacher; he had also played four-hand piano with Brahms! He had all these people on what you might call speed-dial now. Along with these connections Gund was one of the first musicians to promote and actually present lecture-recitals in which he would discuss his research on the complexities of thematic connections in music – and he was twice married to a singer, so he had easy access to interpreters. But I think at heart he was a private person, and he just didn’t like the craziness of what an international career would demand. I met Gund’s grandson, and the more we spoke, the more it seemed as if this was true. Gund, as a composer, seems to have been extremely private.
Natural, Elegant, Evocative
So how would you characterize Gund’s writing then?
CI The quality of his writing is phenomenal! And – I don’t say this lightly – I am hopeful, if not convinced, that more people will be performing his songs now. I have had so many young students already say, “I love this, where can I get the music?” and I tell them: it’s printed. The majority of his lieder were printed in his lifetime, and they are available now; you don’t have to go to any society and get the manuscripts. It’s all printed, everything is out there. And this album with Helmut feels like it was something which was meant for us to do.
What were the unique challenges of not only choosing which pieces to play, but then perfecting and recording them?
HD We had difficulties making selections because there are only so many minutes you can have on a CD. When we first selected the songs we liked, we went far over the running time – so we had to edit, and it was really very hard for us to say goodbye to so many wonderful works. There is much more to discover of Gund than is even on this record.
CI The main thing we wanted was to have a nice mix; some of the songs make use of unique metres, like 5/4, but Gund uses the time in such a refined way that it just lulls you in. And I think Helmut can confirm that some composers try to get the piano accompaniment right, but Gund comes from a more pianistic side already – he was lucky to be married to singers who probably also had their influence on his writing – but the piano parts are incredibly interesting. So whenever, as a singer, I had the feeling that I needed a little injection of energy, it was right there. Gund uses very simple things, things that, in my opinion, only a master composer can apply in such a way. His writing feels very natural, very right, simple but elegant, and very evocative and realistically idiomatic for the actual instrument, whether voice or piano.
“A Rollercoaster of Musical Styles”
So why Gund and Grosz, together?
CI To start at the beginning: Helmut actually found a book about Robert Gund. That was the initiative. I think; you stumbled across it by chance – correct me if that’s not right, Helmut?
HD It was in Bonn, in a bookshop; there were two books there for five marks – so it was a long time ago indeed – they had Gund’s musical life only, and an appendix with 40 songs. I tried to encourage my former students in Munich with them, and some of them performed a few of the works – but It needed a person like Christian to conduct more research and to find all his other songs. We found out that there is much, much, much more. They both have the connection to Vienna, of course…
CI Yes, the combination with Gund and Grosz was done with reference to very different eras for Vienna composers; I also wrote part of my doctorate about Wilhelm Grosz and the recital scene in Vienna between the two wars. Gund and Grosz meet kind of right in the middle of an era in flux; one person is kind of tapering off and the other person is just emerging. Obviously the style of each is different, but having them both on one recording gives you a little rollercoaster of musical styles, and also a choice of poems; then it ends on Grosz’s English-language songs, which are much lighter.
What makes Grosz’s writing unique?
CI He had an incredible gift for melody, in my opinion, his sense of melody is just so sticky. We mention it in the booklet also, that his work has been covered by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, The Beatles.
HD Initially with the early Grosz songs, I wondered: could I, maybe for a few minutes, be 30 years old again, just to find out whether it’s just my current age making these works difficult, or if they are really so complicated? A lot of parts in these early songs he wrote are on three systems, or, not only three systems – Debussy used this kind of writing also – but most of the chords Grosz writes for both hands have ten voices. And there are a lot of really complicated things in terms of where to put this middle line – in your right hand and in your left hand. Despite my age, I would consider myself not bad at sight-reading…
CI You are the best!
HD … but you could read one chord at one point, and you needed three or four seconds there to figure out the next chord; then the next and the next. In the end, it should be a more or less flowing tempo. After ten days, I was really very close to saying, “Christian, I’m very sorry, I give up.” But I didn’t give up. Now, after a while away from Grosz’s songs for a bit, I look at one of them and that feeling starts again – this can also be extremely difficult. So while Gund was certainly a very good pianist and did write very effective things on the piano, they are not difficult by comparison with Grosz.
CI The feeling of finding music like this… I mean you have an idea of its sound if you look at the music of the time, but there is really no comparison either. You don’t feel any influence by Brahms – maybe there’s a little bit in some songs – but there is no influence by Mahler. There are also no comparisons with recordings as with these other composers, like “This is the best recording of this and that” – when you are making the 250th recording of Winterreise, for example, you can scan generations, but here, you have to find out together, with a musical partner, and this was a fascination.
Discovering Together (With Wine)
Helmut Deutsch (L) and Christian Immler (R). Photo: Andrej Grilc
How has the working chemistry between you changed through the years? And do you, together, feel like ambassadors for these little-known lieder composers?
HD It’s thanks to these composers that the quality is, very much, in the music. And we have, if I may say so, Christian, the same taste.
CI This is very true!
HD It’s always a bad signal if you have to have a lot of discussions about a tempo, about a rubato or the like: “Why do you do this? I would like to go straight forward and you are hesitating.” I can’t remember any discussion of this kind working with Christian. One has to be very thankful to have a partner who feels the same.
CI Yes. I mean, it evolves from rehearsal to rehearsal, but talking about tempo is for me, very annoying. A purely music-making and non-verbal rehearsal is often more effective! The only thing we discussed, really, was which white wine to put into the fridge for dinner – that was important! But the prolongation of our curiosity is something I’m very fortunate to share with Helmut; it’s been a long collaboration already. And I don’t know any other pianist with whom one can have so much fun, just sitting at the piano and trying things out. It is incredible to examine repertoire like this.
Be Still My Heart (Alpha Classics) is released on 28 February 2025.
Years ago I had the pleasure of speaking with Gerald Finley for the first time. It was a conversation about three major role debuts he was making within the space of a year, ones which included the lead in Aribert Reimann’s King Lear at the 2017 edition of the Salzburg Festival (a process he characterized at the time as “emotionally wringing”). The interview marked the first cover story of my writing career, and the first of many subsequent conversations, on and off the record, about various aspects of theatre, music, performance style, and of course, singing.
Starting out as a chorister in Ottawa, the bass baritone went on to study at the Royal College of Music before being accepted into the prestigious UK-based National Opera Studio. Finley’s career marked by a talent for blending sharp music insights, studious vocal practise, and instinctual theatricality. With every role (be they in the operas of Mozart and Puccini or those of Adams and Turnage) Finley’s multi-hued artistry expands, his voracious creative curiosity reaching new and fascinating corners. Noted for his portrayal of Don Giovanni, Finley has performed the role in New York, London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Tel Aviv, Budapest, and at the Glyndebourne Festival, opposite Luca Pisaroni as Leporello.
Gerald Finley as Iago (opposite Jonas Kaufmann) in the Bayerische Staatsoper production of Otello, 2018. Photo: W. Hösl
Finley has performed in many prestigious houses, with Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, Wiener Staatsoper, and the famed Salzburg Festival among them. The focus on German-speaking organizations is particularly noteworthy in light of our most recent conversation; as you’ll read, Finley wasn’t always so confident in such locales, vocally or otherwise, and it took him what he admits was a long time to mature vocally. As he toldBachtrack‘s Mark Pullinger in November 2019,
At one point I had Mozart, Handel and Britten on my CV – there was nothing in between, nothing lyrical, nothing Italianate – and that’s a real struggle when you’re trying to audition. I set myself some hard targets, like Hans Sachs, and I had to learn how to release the sound. Hopefully things are maturing and I’m getting better and keeping the voice fresh.
That freshness has revealed itself in some wonderfully memorable performances over the years. He did, in fact, get to Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (more than once), as well as Amfortas in Parsifal; other noted roles include the villainous Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca, the tormented Athanaël in Massenet’s Thaïs and the very black Bluebeard in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. Finley is also an enthusiastic supporter of contemporary composers, singing in several world premieres, including Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox in 1998, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie in 2000, and the song cycle True Fire by Kaija Saariaho (who dedicated the work to him), under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel in 2015.
Finley made a comically memorable turn as Verdi’s Falstaff (complete with a costume that made him seem four times his size) with the Canadian Opera Company in 2014, and a scarily sociopathic Iago in Othello (opposite tenor Russell Thomas) as part of the COC’s 2018-2019 season. The Royal Opera House Covent Garden recently marked his 30th anniversary with the company,which coincided with his performance in the ROH production of Brittten’s Death in Venice; classical writer Alexandra Coghlan praised Finley’s “sketching character after character in deft musical lines.” Along with working with celebrated conductors (including Mariss Jansons, Sir Antonio Pappano, Kiril Petrenko, Sir Simon Rattle, Colin Davis, Vladimir Jurowski, Fabio Luisi, Franz Welser-Möst, Harry Bicket, and Bernard Haitink), Finley was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2014; three years later, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to opera.
Gerald Finley as Sir John Falstaff in the Canadian Opera Company production of Falstaff, 2014. Photo: Michael Cooper
As a personal aside, I have distinct and fond memories of Finley’s performance as the lead in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell; I was fortunate to see him perform it live at the Metropolitan Opera in a production from their 2016-2017 season. Finley’s robust Tell was a perfect echo of the character’s aching struggles (inner and outer), a seamless combination of great musicality, finely-crafted vocality, and a very keen, highly watchable theatricality; his was a deeply visceral portrayal, one that underlined the very real historical stakes while revelling in Rossini’s deceptively simple score. Finley is set to reprise the role this May at Bayerische Staatsoper, but before then, he can be seen on the stage of The Met (as Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte), as well as in Montreal and at Carnegie and Wigmore halls, where he’ll be performing a range of beloved lieder.
Finley’s distinct gift for German art song is beautifully expressed on a recording for Hyperion Records he and pianist Julius Drake made of Schubert’s Schwanengesang and Brahms’s Vier ernste Gesänge, released in autumn 2019. The pair previously recorded Schubert’s famed Winterreise cycle (2014), songs by Samuel Barber (2007) and Maurice Ravel (2008), and did a live concert recording at Wigmore Hall (2008). Schwanengesang (or “swan song”) is a song cycle written by Franz Schubert written at the end of his life in 1828. I’ve written about Schubert’s love of the writings of Goethe, but in this particular cycle, Schubert used the poetry of three writers, Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Rellstab, and Johann Gabriel Seidl; his publisher, Tobias Haslinger, was the one who cannily named the song cycle thusly, following the composer’s premature death in November 1828. The works deal with themes of hope, love, longing, disillusion, and disenchantment, their sounds gracefully moving between sombre, sensual, and stark. Brahms wrote his Vier ernste Gesänge (“Four Serious Songs”) in 1896, using portions of text from the Lutheran Bible. Writer Richard Wigmore observes in the album’s liner notes that the songs were “(d)esigned to comfort the living, and indeed Brahms himself” – the composer’s longtime confidante (some might say more) Clara Schumann had suffered a stroke earlier that year, and he wrote them partly in full anticipation of her passing, though he was also feeling the first effects of the cancer that would take his life a year later. Wigmore characterizes the works as “profound, unsentimental testaments to (Brahms’s) sympathy for suffering, stoical humanity, his belief in the virtue of hard work, and the enduring power of love.”
Finley and Drake capture these themes with vivid clarity on the album. The opening track, “Liebesbotschaft” (or “message of love”), in which the speaker asks a little stream to send his message of love along to his beloved, sees Finley carefully modulating his chocolatey-bronze bass baritone, sensitively complementing, than contrasting, dense sonic textures amidst Julius Drake’s rippling, breath-like piano performance. On the famous “Ständchen” (“serenade”), a song in which the speakers asks his beloved to bring him happiness, Finley lovingly caresses every syllable so delicately so as to make the listener lean in, as if being told a very private secret. The meticulous attention paid to blending clarity and expression, particularly in the Brahms works, is miraculous; nothing sounds wooden and hard, but rather, silken, and fluid, with just the right amount of sensuality in phrasing and tone. Albums like this remind me why I love classical music, of its transcendent power to so often say what spoken language cannot. Finley’s deep dedication to the art of song is entrancing and he has a true and brilliant partner in the acclaimed Julius Drake. I had long wanted to discuss lieder with Finley, and the duo’s beautiful Schubert/Brahms album provided the perfect excuse to enjoy another lively conversation with a deeply dedicated and authentic artist.
Gerald Finley as the Gondolier in the ROH production of Death In Venice, 2019. Photo: Catherine Ashmore
I read that you were afraid of Schubert for a long time – is that true?
Oh yeah!
Why?
Well, because he’s so simple. The thing about Schubert is that he is basically such a natural melodist and really gives the idea these songs have existed forever; I think to make them one’s own if you like, to have one’s own connection and one’s own version, and putting one’s own version into the world, takes a lot of confidence. The main thing about it is that I felt it would reveal all my technical insecurities and failings, and … I think it’s only really in the past decade really, that I’ve felt those sort of things have ironed themselves out. Put it this way; I always felt I could sing Schubert but I never felt competent enough to actually do it. I always shied away from the types of repertoire which would reveal my weaknesses rather than my strengths.
Now it seems as if, having had so much experience with the music of Schubert, his work has become a part of your artistic identity…
Very much, but it’s taken me a long time to become comfortable with the culture of the language, and of the poetry, and the culture of the German history therein. Many young singers direct their early careers into German houses because that’s where obviously lots of work is, and they have the privilege of learning German and being in a German environment for the early parts of their careers, and for various reasons I didn’t do that – I actually rejected a place at the Hamburg State Opera when I was 26, because I knew I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t vocally prepared for that. So I kind of negated my opportunity to become immersed in the German environment and that entire musical world and experience. So my German became something I would learn on the way doing concerts, doing tours with orchestras; until my mid-30s I actually never appeared in a German opera house. It took a long time for me to become comfortable with the language. It did happen, eventually – I was invited to festivals in Austria and did Papageno in and around Germany, so that helped a lot to bolster my German confidence.
And you know, there have been a lot of really good German lieder singers, and to be part of the lieder fraternity is really something I longed for. I learned Wolf and Brahms and I did my best at Schumann for a while, and enjoyed it all very much, but Schubert being kind of the father of those, I realized it was going to take some time to get to the core, but it did happen, where I felt could really go to that altar for the father of lieder, and say, “Here’s my humble offering of what you have written!”
And of course Fischer-Dieskau was the main thing, my first recording was his Volume 1 of Schubert – so yes, it confronted me very much: what business did I have even attempting it?! I kind of got over it and realized, and still feel, Schubert has been my friend, he’s somebody I look to for inspiration. He demands I really think carefully about what it is to be an artist, because (the music) is so relatively clear on the page, and one this almost blank emotional canvas to treat the verse differently and to infuse the words in a way which will give meaning. There’s a feeling as soon as you record it, that the version you have in your head and heart at that moment… well, you will suddenly think, “Oh! But I could’ve done it this way!” So that’s why keeping performances scheduled in the diary is really wonderful, those versions will change and develop. And hopefully, going to other artists and seeing how they handle (the same material) – it’s really inspiring to develop. I don’t know whether painters go through the same thing, where they redo canvases all the time or decide they want to add various elements or develop a theme – but there we are, that’s why lieder is such a fountain of artistic joy now, and I feel that vocally I’ve been able to sort of finally mature into it.
Performing these pieces one has to be willing to enter into a specific place, or places, as you know, and being human, one’s not always in the mood or one’s tired, or there are other things going on – it’s not easy, but there are similar challenges in doing opera performances. What changes for you, going between your recital work and your opera work? How do you navigate those changes?
It’s a mindset, really. First and foremost, lieder is an intimate art form – it’s really thoughts which are, you know, nurtured out of a poet, and you get the feeling there’s a very personal relationship between the composer and the poetry they’re setting, that the way they’ve been inspired and reacted, or want to bring certain elements of a poem to the fore, takes quiet contemplation, it’s a very mindful thing. My very good friend and colleague (tenor) Mark Padmore says the difficulty of doing lieder recitals is that it was really meant to be sung amongst just a few people, and again, it’s really a very intimate art form, almost a private thing. What you’re asking audiences to do is give up elements of their busy lives and come into a space where they can become very quiet and very thoughtful, and think, not about what’s on the surface of their lives, but to delve a lot deeper, and a share a poetical journey, a psychological situation with a recitalist, in a way that is pretty demanding.
Mark Padmore as Aschenbach and Gerald Finley as the Elderly Fop in the ROH production of Death In Venice, 2019. Photo: Catherine Ashmore
We do put demands on audiences, and it could be the cause of decline in audiences for lieder because it takes special listening skills and patience, and a certain acceptance that, okay, particularly for non-linguists, there are a couple pieces they may feel estranged from, but at least they’re there, listening to beautiful piano playing and hopefully good singing. So we’ll keep doing it, to keep people give them that opportunity to get involved with the best parts of their soul.
There’s something healthy about having that demanded of you as a listener. I want that to be demanded of me when I go to concerts, because otherwise I don’t feel I have a very satisfying experience.
Indeed! And to your question about the differences between lieder and opera for the performer, really, opera is such a collaborative event, you, the singer, are at the top of the iceberg as it were, you appear above, on the top 10th, or more like 2%, of a wealth of creativity and musicality and theatrics and administration too, so your voice and portrayal is a culmination of a h-u-u-u-ge team effort.
Gerald Finley as Iago in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Otello, 2019. Photo: Michael Cooper
And yes, you have to deliver the goods and focus on your character, and give your vocal performance the absolute top level in extremes, and that’s really not what lieder is about… it’s not much teamwork, other than with your fellow musician, and it can be chamber of course, as part of a string quartet or with a guitarist or flutist as well as the piano version, so I like to think that perhaps you are your own stage manager and production team and artistic personnel (in lieder recitals).
There are people who are endeavoring to bring out the essence of the presentation of lieder in a more theatrical way, like having staged elements, and I find that a revelation – because why shouldn’t people be inspired by beautiful, fundamental music? I tell you what: pace Barbara Streisand, if a pop singer got hold of a Schubert song and did something amazing with it, you’d be finding people saying, “Well, that’s a cover version, but where’s the original?” Hopefully! Or the other way around, take a Joni Mitchell song and rewrite it as a Schubert lied or Brahms lied, and… yes, I think we just need to be a little more accepting of how people are trying to just make sure these elements of inspiration can be shared by all.
Speaking of shared inspiration, the baldly emotional nature of lieder translates into the demands it makes on singers: you can’t hide.
That is actually one of the challenges of the technical aspects. Often the frustration about being a younger singer is that one hasn’t quite got the technical lability to be as free and honest in vocal terms. There are lots of wonderful musicians who are doing beautiful things with their voices but it means less, and that’s what we’re after, of course, is “the beautiful voice.” For me, my heroes are Fischer-Dieskau and Tom Krause and Hermann Prey, or José Van Dam doing Mahler; you’re not worried about how they sound, you’re worried about how they feel, but the reason you do that is because their voices are in such perfect shape! It’s like suddenly their instrument is serving them – that’s why it’s a rare thing, because we singers spend our whole life trying to figure out how to sing in order to be free, to be free from all that.
Gerald Finley as Bluebeard and Angela Denoke as Judith in Bartók’s “Bluebeard’s Castle.” Photo : Marty Sohl / Met Opera
It’s a fascinating pairing on this album. What was the thinking behind including the music of Brahms? The linguistic and musical poetry is so different from that of Schubert.
Essentially, I mean, in a kind of a very facile sort of conceit, the Brahms works were among the last things he wrote. He was at a time when he was in deep mourning for Clara (Schumann), and … well, to hear that Brahms… he was always at his best when he was thinking about hard things, big challenges, and the richness of the writing is so extraordinary. So in terms of periods of life for both composers, you know, really they are the two respective “swan songs,” effectively. I always feel Brahms is somebody who thought he knew where the spiritual elements of his life lay; you get it in the Requiem, of course, and certainly in these songs, and in the late string music. It’s all very dense and full of passion, and we feel that. I mean, Schubert knew he was dying of course, Brahms a little less, even though it was late in his life; he knew his time as a composer was reaching its end. So you get this kind of creative surge from both composers, and that’s really what attracted us to doing these works.
From Brahms’s overall output came many beautiful songs, but these ones are one huge level higher – the use of the language, the biblical texts, was very much something which encapsulated his fervor for the human potential of love and forgiveness, and relating to toil. As a socialist approach, it was, “death will comfort those who have toiled,” but also, “those who’ve lived comfortable lives is why there’s fear but there is still hope that the comfort of death will be here for you” – and that’s remarkable as a thesis. So yes, in these Brahms songs, death is treated with great… hope, and love, I’d say. The idea of being in a marvelous revelry of celebrating life – “What was it? Life was love; the greatest of all these things is love” – so I do feel Brahms was an extremely passionate person, behind all that grizzle.
Gerald Finley as the Hotel Barber and Mark padmore as ASchenbach in the ROH production of Death In Venice, 2019. Photo: Catherine Ashmore
That sense is especially noticeable in the final song, “Wenn ich mit Menschen” (When I am with people), which draws together spiritual longing and human logning, the epic and the intimate, in this great expression of acceptance and understanding.
Completely! The elemental earnestness of it – “Ernste” – I almost feel if you didn’t get it in the Requiem, then yes, you will here. One’s life can have a sense of accomplishment if you have loved – and he loved through this music, and certainly in life…
Clara.
Yes, Clara for sure, and his mother as well, which was a big element. We know much less about Schubert’s love life and I suppose that makes him slightly more mysterious as to what his thoughts on love were, except for the fact that if you delve into the songs, for instance the Serenade, really, it’s a marvel of positive thoughts in a minor key, and negative thoughts in major keys, it’s just extraordinary how he goes against convention in thinking minor is more fulfilling than major keys. There’s lots of wonderful mysteries, shall we say, about Schubert’s music in that regard. He did struggle with the idea of being recognized too, as a composer of any worth, and from that point of view it’s also, you wonder, was he ever appreciated? Did he ever feel his music had any worth? And for me that’s the melancholy aspect of not just him but many people — Beethoven not hearing the applause, for instance – but the whole idea is that these composers are wearing their passions in their music, and thank goodness for it.
Anyone who has ever seen John Daszak live in performance isn’t likely to forget the experience. The British tenor brings to mind Goethe’s quote that “(g)reat passions are diseases without hope (Große Leidenschaften sind Krankheiten ohne Hoffnung)” (Maxims and Reflections, No. 23). Opera – its artists, its practitioners, its scholars and its fans – are all thusly afflicted, willingly and repeatedly, by the “disease” of opera, that most magical of art forms – one which Daszak so excels in, and indeed largely, boldly embodies.
Earlier this year the busy singer performed on the stage of the Bayerische Staatsoper (Bavarian State Opera) in Munich, in a colourful new production of Janáček’s Kat’a Kabanová by Krzysztof Warlikowski with musical direction by Marc Albrecht. Daszak was the hapless husband Tichon, opposite Corinne Winters in the title role and Pavel Černoch as lover Boris; he imbued the character with an unmissable pathos, betraying his own deep and longstanding love of theatre – and then there’s that voice, one capable of both great lyricism and great authority in equal measure. His Tichon, performed with a crystalline Czech diction and agile vocality, had a ringing top and a texture colourful and glowing one moment, despairing and plaintive the next. It was a dramatic if controlled approach, one perfectly befitting the singer’s approach (largely sympathetic, as you’ll read) while also attuned to the composer’s percussive writing. Showman? Definitely, but never just for the sake of it.
Getting his start at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and then the Royal Northern College of Music, Daszak made his debut at the Royal Opera Covent Garden in 1996 and has since gone on to perform at the some of the world’s most acclaimed houses including The Metropolitan Opera, Teatro Alla Scala, Berliner Staatsoper, Komische Oper Berlin, Opéra national de Paris, the aforementioned Royal Opera, The Bolshoi, Dutch National Opera, Teatro di San Carlo, Staatsoper Hamburg, Grand Théâtre de Genève, and Teatro Real; he has also appeared at a variety of annual events including Glyndebourne, Bayreuther Festspiele, Ruhr Triennale, and the Salzburg Festival – where, in 2017, Daszak sang the role of Tambour Major in a critically acclaimed presentation of Wozzeck directed by South African artist William Kentridge. Together with these appearances, he has worked with a range of famed directors (Tcherniakov, Bieito, McVicar, Kosky), and conductors too (Daniel Barenboim, Tugan Sokhiev, Kirill Petrenko, Simone Young) – as he explained in a recent conversation, what’s most important for any and every opera team is an innate appreciation of the art form as both theatre and music, together.
Complementing that appreciation is a broad and largely demanding repertoire, one that reflects both an artistic curiosity and a love of, and for, drama. Throughout his career he has often embodying tormented, slippery, and/or unsavoury characters; Daszak’s characterizations run the gamut from touching to sympathetic to heroic to outright sleazy – but they are always recognizably human. That human quality is especially noticeable in the voice; one is tempted to offer comparisons here (Kollo, Beirer, Vickers especially) – but Daszak is Daszak; the diction is impeccable; the tone, alternatingly sweet and acid, depending on the work; the delivery, keenly aware, attenuated, careful, dazzling. Works by Shostakovich, (Richard) Strauss, Hindemith, Mussorgsky, Britten, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schreker, Pfitzner, Prokofiev, Wagner, Weill, and of course, Janáček pepper his bio; the role of Herodes in Strauss’s Salome, which he’ll be doing again in Zürich shortly, is one could claim to have put his signature on, albeit in wildly different productions, including a memorable presentation by Lydia Steier for Opera national de Paris in 2022.
His turn as Tichon in Kat’a Kabanová last month in Munich marks the latest in a long line of appearances at the storied Bayerische Staatsoper, where he has appeared in a dizzying array of roles. Those include the titular Der Zwerg (Zemlinsky); Le Lépreux in Messiaen’s epic Saint François d’Assise; Bernardo Novagerio in Pfitzner’s Palestrina; Die Knusperhexe in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel; Prince Vasily Golitsïn in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina; Tambour Major in Wozzeck; Aegisth in Elektra; and Alviano Salvago in Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten. The latter role was one he also performed at Opernhaus Zürich in 2018, in a very memorable (and rather muddy) production directed by Barrie Kosky and led by Vladimir Jurowski. In 2020, he appeared again at the Zürich house as Prince Shuisky in a pandemic-era presentation of Boris Godunov alongside bass Brindley Sherratt.
Passion for the stage and for music connect with passion for his own culture; as much as being an ambassador for opera, Daszak, who has Ukrainian heritage, has also been a vocal supporter of the country and its people, particularly since Russia’s invasion in 2022. That doesn’t mean, however, he won’t appear in Russian-language/penned operas; it does mean no more trips to Moscow. As he explains, it’s a personal decision, one that, in his case, has direct connection to those at the front. Currently in Italy, Daszak is preparing for dual roles (as Il carceriere and Il grande Inquisitore) in Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero with Teatro dell’Opera di Roma opening 23 April. From Rome, he heads to Zürich for a revival of Salome opening the end of May. He returns to Munich as part of Bayerische Staatsoper’s summer festival presentation of Kat’a Kabanová on 7 July.
Speaking in a rhythmic, rapid-fire blend of memories, musings, and lines from favourite works (operas, novels, poems and pop songs), Daszak is an intense – and intensely likeable – presence: unpretentious, earthy, funny, and roaringly intelligent. Perhaps he is a symbol of Goethe’s “disease” – or rather, quite simply, an embodiment of the art form itself. Either way, if conversation was a song, our recent exchange was an entire cycle, and then some.
KáťaKabanová: “The whole opera is really about dysfunctional relationships”
It was in 2000, in Paris – I was 32 years old. It’s funny because I work with singers now. I like coaching and online teaching. I’ve got quite a few students now since COVID, because people were locked up and they couldn’t go anywhere and they said, “Do you want to give me a lesson?” I said, “Yeah, sure, because I’m at home, I’ve got time, you’ve got time, why not?” So I worked with these singers, some of them are quite young – 30, 31, 32 – and I thought, good lord, I sang Peter Grimes at La Scala and Boris in Káťa Kabanová at Paris Opera at that age… wow. Before that, I did it when I was at Glyndebourne on tour – I was singing in the chorus and covering Tichon. So I knew the role at that point, but I’d not sung it.
What’s it like coming back to the same opera after two decades, but in a different role?
It’s fun but it’s also strange, because of course I’m no longer the “young lover“; people might not now cast me as Boris, or even Sergei in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which I’ve sung quite a bit. Maybe you could get away with that one, actually – Sergei doesn’t have to be that young – but Boris is supposed to be roughly 20 years old, I think, he even says his uncle’s in charge of his inheritance until he comes of age. But when you’re playing someone who’s not so different in age from you, you see things differently.
I feel for him. When I first came into the production, I knew I wanted to play him as a sympathetic character. I think he should be in love with Káťa; people say, “Oh, he’s not in love with her” – I play him as if he is in love with her but he can’t function as a normal human being because of the damage done by his mother. I play it like he’s living under this big shadow of his mother that he can’t really get himself out of or away from – he loves Káťa but he can’t function in a relationship because of the dysfunction within his own upbringing. The whole opera is really about dysfunctional relationships.
Language, Sound, Meaning
To what extent does the language complement that dysfunction?
The language is so percussive and rhythmic; so specific, and very evocative of the people. Janáček’s music reflects the Czech language itself, probably more than any other Czech composer. I think all of the rhythms are in the writing – in the percussion; in the strings; in the woodwinds. You can hear this stress on the first syllable and then there might be a long syllable after. You hear the language right in the music.
You’ve been in Russian, Czech, German operas; what’s your process for learning them?
My operatic career can be likened to this: there are people who like skiing down a beautiful piste and having lunch at a restaurant and a glass of wine and then skiing on, and the people who like to go in a helicopter to the top of a mountain, get dropped off and ski down the mountain. The latter is the kind of opera experience that I am used to. I’m a helicopter skier, not in real life – but in opera, yes. So yes, I have sung Russian in Moscow; Spanish in Madrid; Italian in Italy; of course French in France. And German in Germany, though I still haven’t mastered spoken German. But I don’t think I’m really a natural linguist, and I don’t believe that you have to speak a language fluently to be able to perform an opera in that language – I mean, I don’t speak Russian; I don’t speak Spanish. But what you do have to do is study – and you have to have a thorough process of learning.
My process is, first of all, if someone offers me a new role, I look through all the music and think, “Yep, I could probably manage that.” Then, if I accept it and have to learn it, I go through the whole of the text, and, if it’s tricky music, I mark up different beats here and there – where the stress is in the bar, so I know my way around it to navigate musically.
Then I go through the text, and I work with someone who’s a native speaker in that language. You’ve got to find someone who speaks that language, who’s also preferably got an artistic side, but not necessarily. I work with them for a few hours. It takes at least, I would say two or three sessions, each one consisting of two or three hours, so it’s at least six to nine hours in total to go through all the text and learn how to pronounce it; you need to know the pronunciation of everything. Then comes a literal translation – every single word, what it literally means; it might not make sense in English, but at least you know exactly what you’re singing at what point. For instance, at one point in Jenufa, Steva sings what literally translates as “I, I, I, I drunk?” – it doesn’t make much sense in English, but he’s really saying, “What do you mean I’m drunk? Me? Me drunk?” So you have to do pronunciation, literal translation, and then a kind of cultural translation. But it’s interesting that it’s almost impossible to do justice to Czech in an English translation, because all the stresses are wrong.
“I didn’t think of it as being any different from any other music”
Did you set out to actually do these kinds of roles?
I built my audition repertoire from singing in Glyndebourne Chorus – it was a great place to get a bit of training; if you’re in the chorus they try to find decent covers from the chorus. So if someone gets sick you go on and do rehearsals, or you go on and do a show. I’d been studying there and learning Tichon and Steva.
So you already knew that this Czech music was in your voice…
… because I’d been asked to cover them. I auditioned and they immediately said, “Oh wow, you can cover some of the Janáček pieces.” It was the then-casting director, Sarah Playfair, who picked up on it at the time.
Had you ever considered Janáček before that?
Funnily enough, one of the operas we did at the Royal Northern College of Music was From The House of the Dead. I sang Skuratov, which is quite a big role, and it was great fun. I didn’t think of it as being any different from any other music that I sang at the time, but I was probably 22 years old. I think the music was somehow in my heart and blood, maybe because my dad is from Ukraine. I feel like I know these Janáček characters, because I’ve grown up with my father around the house, and around his friends. Even though there weren’t that many Ukrainians in the UK, there was actually a Ukrainian club in our local town outside Manchester and there were quite a lot of expats at that club who’d left during the war.
Do you have any problem with performing Russian works now?
I talked with a Ukrainian lady who’s a journalist just the other day and she asked the same thing. My cousin’s son is a viola player and he’s now in the army at the front. People might well say, “Well, then how can you appear in Russian works knowing that this is happening?” I can understand it, but also, if it’s not a contemporary work, then what did Tchaikovsky have to do with what’s happening now? Also most Russian historical composers were anti- establishment – think of Shostakovich: in Lady Macbeth he’s taking the mickey out of the whole government, he’s making them look foolish. That’s why Stalin, when he saw it, said “Nyet”. I think it’s a mistake to cancel everything. Certain performers who haven’t clearly said “I’m against this” I have more of a difficulty with.
I had a contract in Russia myself – I was supposed to go back and do a Salome there that we’d done in Aix-en-Provence but thank God it was cancelled. I don’t want to go there. I can’t imagine that I will ever go to Russia again – it would take a long time and there would have to be a lot of positive things done towards Ukraine before I would do it. As it is, I haven’t even been to Ukraine during the war. I was asked if I would go to adjudicate a competition; I spoke to my family about it, and they said, are you insane? I wanted to show solidarity with my family and Ukrainians at this terrible time, but my cousin’s son said “No, you’re better staying out of Ukraine; you can do more for Ukraine in what you’re doing right now than you could by coming here.”
From as far as I can remember from being a child I was always a bit of a showman. If I saw an advert on TV, I’d reenact it for my parents and my two older brothers – I think it’s to do with being the youngest: you’re always striving for attention. I’ve always been kind of theatrical. I started singing very young and I used to sing a lot and was in choirs, though I did play violin and then switched to double bass. I had a theatrical side to me, but I didn’t have the technique of acting; I knew nothing about it. At the RNCM (Royal Northern College of Music) I remember being around the Head of Vocal Studies, the singing department of the Opera School, Joseph Ward, who had a great voice, very English. He was a tenor and he had this heady, warm sound; equally important was how he made you respect what you were doing, including most especially the acting side of things.
If I did a lieder recital now, I’d have to almost stage it – I’ve always been busy with opera and that is my favorite thing, to have the costume, set, rehearsals, the theater side of it, because for me it’s kind of escapist – but if you’re doing a lieder recital in front of an audience, you can really see the faces of the audience, all looking at you; that’s one of the scariest things in the world. I have worked with Julius Drake for many years, and I remember over 20 years ago he wanted to do The Diary of One Who Disappeared at the Chichester Festival, and of course, I’d sung in Czech already. I memorized it and made it into a bit of a show. I used a chair and some props – everybody loved it. It was very successful.
I’ve worked with a lot of great directors, including a lot of cutting-edge ones like Bieito, Tcherniakov, Kosky, Warlikowski. They’ve repeatedly asked me to do things with them because they like the way I work. I always see it as my responsibility: to try and do the best job for the music and the text. That means I try and do what the conductor wants, and try and do what the director wants. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a big issue with a director that I’ve said, “I can’t do that because I’ve got to sing” or “I’m not going to do that because that will make me look ridiculous.”
Die Gezeichneten in Zürich was incredibly daring. Can you imagine the conversation at the beginning with Barrie? “You’re gonna strip off and have mud and blood thrown at you.” We actually had a rehearsal just for the mud and blood part! I came in one day and there was plastic all over the floor, and I thought, “Yep, here we go!” Kosky is great because he enjoys working and you always have fun with him in rehearsals, but also he’s got a brilliant mind; he remembers everything, and if you mess something up or don’t remember what you did gesture-wise, he’s on you straight away: “Ah, no, you’re supposed to do that.”
Tcherniakov is also fantastic – he wants things to be very specific; he’s almost got a kind of cinematographic idea of exactly what he wants but he does say, “No, don’t do that, do it more like this” or “Great, I love what you did; do it again.” There’s a framework. Warlikowski is less structured, but he is fascinating to work with; we sit down and talk through the text. There is an overall concept, but it’s much more like, ‘We’re going to discover things on this journey together.” There’s a lot of experimentation.
And conductors?
They tend to have a very specific idea of what they want – sometimes it does become a problem if they’re not so interested in the dramatic side. Zubin Mehta is, for me, still one of the best opera conductors, because he’s so with you on stage. He was always controlling the orchestra, and looking at you; if you held a note a bit longer, then he would wait. He has the technique to do that, and he also has an interest in what’s going on on stage. He understands it’s about the singers and about the drama, about the theater. So the best opera conductors understand and like both things: the music, and the theatre.
Amidst waterfalls of bad news, a busy personal work schedule, poor health, and crushingly low moods, this autumn has often felt like a very long swim uphill, through maple syrup, in the dark. Music helps, of course, but sometimes so do people, or more specifically, the energy of meaningful exchanges. Sometimes those conversations lead to new discoveries, for one or both parties, cultural or otherwise; sometimes they can also trigger rediscoveries.
Lately I have been diving into my mother’s extensive vinyl collection, specifically the recordings of various Puccini operas. 2024 marks 100 years since the composer’s passing, and a number of organizations have been marking the occasion, including Teatro Alla Scala, Opera Australia, and the Pacific Music Festival. In a list for Gramophone in early October, music writer Mark Pullinger names ten defining moments within Puccini’s operatic presentation history and includes now-famous broadcasts and productions, some of which sit in my vinyl collection (including the famous Maria Callas/Tosca, natch). This week, amidst grading and emails, I found myself stopping to marvel anew at Luciano Pavarotti’s “Che gelida manina”, from the famous Karajan-led recording of La bohème done at Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin in 1972 and also featuring Mirella Freni as Mimi. Whew.
Puccini wonderment aside, this is woefully late list of things to read, watch, ponder. More is coming soon, including many fascinating interviews for 2025. Until then:
Nominations for the 67th annual GRAMMY® Awards were announced on November 8th; among the nominees is Deutsche Grammophon recording of Adriana Mater by Kaija Saariaho, released earlier this year. The Esa-Pekka Salonen-led recording featuring the San Francisco Symphony received two nominations, Best Opera Recording and Best Contemporary Classical Composition; I interviewed the opera’s leads (Fleur Barron, who sings the titular Adriana and Axelle Fanyo as Adriana’s sister Refka) earlier this autumn. The awards will be handed out February 2nd in Los Angeles.
Fleur Barron in the 2023 San Francisco Symphony presentation of Adriana Mater by Kaija Saariaho. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small
English National Opera (ENO) recently announced programming for their new locale in Manchester. Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass and an in-concert performance of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte are part of the lineup, which errs heavily to new(ish) work. Music writer Richard Bratby salutes the company’s ambition but still has some (rather convincing) reservations. (“English National Opera’s Manchester plan shows flair but it’s still a mess“, The Times, 21 November). He highlights a vital point amidst ENO’s many challenges and its recent move, namely “how does Opera North fit into this brave new world where ENO rules the roost in Manchester? Or does it?” Indeed.
Some of the other points Bratby raises highlight the findings of a recent report by Opera America about newcomers to opera. The study, conducted between 2020 and 2024, surveyed 11,000 attendees across 36 various-sized companies in the United States. It turns out (well well, shock shock) newcomers mostly come for the tried-and-true operas of yore (i.e. the Aidas, Carmens, Traviatas) and that, quite encouragingly, they’ve investigated what they’re about to see a little bit beforehand; what mostly prevents a return is ticket prices. (“Understanding Opera’s New Audiences“, Opera America, 21 November).
A report released earlier this month from the UK-based Sutton Trust pinpoints class as a prime reason for lack of representation in the arts. Among the many suggestions for creating greater equity within the cultural world: banning unpaid internships lasting more than four weeks. HUZZAH. (“Young working-class people being ‘blocked’ from creative industries, study finds“, Nadia Khomani, The Guardian, 13 November)
Photo: Jan Windszus Photography
Budget cuts to Berlin’s vibrant arts scene have recently been announced. Among the most dramatic: the planned renovation of Komische Oper Berlin’s historic Behrenstrasse theatre has been put on hold for two years (supposedly), after various levels of government – namely Senator for Culture Joe Chialo and Mayor Kai Wegner – had made assurances that very thing would not happen. Former Intendant Barrie Kosky wrote a passionate open letter in Tagesspiegel underlining the theatre’s significant Jewish history. Current KOB Managing Director Susanna Moser told music writer Axel Brueggemann in a podcast that she learned of the grim news in the newspaper. She added that she’s keeping her faith intact for a positive resolution. (“Ich gebe mehr nicht die Kugel“, Backstage Classical, 24 November).
Brueggemann had himself tried getting an interview with Chialo, only to be repeatedly stonewalled by assistants. The Senator for Culture did give an interview to FAZ; Brueggemann has nicely summarized his thoughts therein, which include a move toward long-needed structural changes, the development of corporate partnerships, and higher ticket prices. Eeeeek. (“Joe Chialo verteidigt Berlin-Einsparungen“, Backstage Classical, 27 November)
Opern News reporter Stephan Burianek has written a very thorough article about bass Ildar Abdrazakov’s now-cancelled appearance in the Teatro San Carlo production of Don Carlo set to open January 19th. The Russian artist and ardent Putin supporter may shriek victimhood (and receive much public/collegial sympathy) but there’s equal merit to considering that Abdrazakov was, to use a Russian saying, trying to sit on two chairs at once. The question of funding sources does remain relevant, more than ever (see above) and it’s fortifying to see those sources being more thoroughly investigated; Burianek has, thankfully, brought the receipts. (“Eine Bürde für den Anstand“, Opern News, 19 November)
Read/hear the word “reimagined” within the opera world lately and one tends to hold one’s breath (especially given the reimagining/political censoring/total remake of Schnittke’s Life With An Idiot recently in Zurich) – but La Carmencita, happening next month in New York City, intrigues. The Spanish-language translation of Bizet’s famous opera is being recontextualized here through a Latin American lens, courtesy of soprano/producer Sasha Gutiérrez, director Rebecca Miller Kratzer, and GRAMMY®Award-winning bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo. The Opera Next Door production runs for one night only, on 6 December, at the David Rubinstein Auditorium, Lincoln Center; admission is free.
More immediately: Four Note Opera, presented by Nederlandse Opera Studio, takes place tomorrow in Groningen as part of the city’s wide-ranging Sounds Of Music Festival. The satirical 1972 work by Tom Johnson indeed uses only four notes together with five soloists and a pianist; Dutch National Opera first presented the unusual opera earlier this year in a co-production with the Nederlandse Reisopera and Opera Zuid.
Also tomorrow: a tribute to the late, great Benjamin Luxon is taking place at Wigmore Hall (London) at noon. The Cornish baritone died in July at the age of 87, having enjoyed a varied career encompassing lieder, oratorio, opera, ballads, folk songs, as well as work in television. In a remembrance published in August in The Guardian, music writer Barry Millington praised Luxon’s “burnished baritone, genial personality and seemingly effortless vocal projection”. Tomorrow’s tribute will include a host of British music luminaries including Sir Bryn Terfel, Dame Janet Baker, and Sir Thomas Allen, and the event will be livestreamed from the Hall.
In closing: composer Pavel Karmanov passed away on November 23rd; the Siberia-born composer was 54. Along with being a composer, pianist, and flutist, as well as a hugely influential teacher and music figure, Karmanov was a member of the rock band Vezhlivy Otkaz from 2000 until 2017. This performance of Karmanov’s 1993 composition “Birthday Present For Myself”, recorded in Paris in 2014, feels particularly right (not least because my own birthday happens in a little over two weeks) – the work bears traces of Debussy, Glass, and Silvestrov:
Until next time: stay warm, stay home if you’re sick, and remember the c-word.
Autumn is nigh, and with it one hopes for a respite from summer’s brutal heat. The temperatures of the season in the Northern Hemisphere were the hottest on record for the second straight year, according to a report by Copernicus, the climate change service for the European Union. With the start of the slow drive to winter comes the opening of the classical/opera season, and a related and different (if no less noticeable) kind of chill. The mix of new productions/voices/scores/schedules/casts/colleagues, to say nothing of the anticipation/dread concomitant within audiences and critics alike, brings its own unique set of temperature changes for everyone in and around the classical/opera world.
On a personal level, autumn has become a very paradoxical time: it means a welcome return to teaching duties – the structures such work entails and the inspiration its individual members always bring – but a simultaneously deep (and at times literally painful) FOMO that can last right through to December. Out of sight; out of mind? Hmmm.
In any case, here’s this month’s list of noteworthy things – musical, cultural, and otherwise – things to catch the imagination, inspire the intellect, and tickle the ears:
September 4th was the 200th birthday of composer Anton Bruckner. My favourite recording of Bruckner’s famous Seventh Symphony is by Bernard Haitink and his Concertgebouw Orchestra, part of a series of recordings done between 1963 and 1972 of all nine of Bruckner’s symphonies. This series was a major entry point for me (and I would imagine many others) into the composer’s larger overall oeuvre. Many organizations (including the Concertgebouw) have marked, or been marking, or will continue to mark, Bruckner’s birthday this year – the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Lucerne, Granada, and Verbier Festivals, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Calgary Philharmonic among them. Composer Anton Safronov has written an immensely insightful essay on the composer for Musical Life magazine (“Bruckner 200 Years Later: The Half-Moron Demigod of New Music“; in Russian, translates nicely to English) which makes references to a host of composers including Schnittke, Mussorgsky, and Denisov, while conductor Markus Poschner, chief conductor of the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, spoke to Kirchen Zeitung (“Bruckner Never Gets Boring“) about various versions of the composer’s symphonies, Wagner’s influence, tempi choices, as well as his own recordings of the complete works with both the Linz and the Vienna Radio Symphony orchestras.
Arnold Schoenberg is also being feted by organizations; the composer’s 150th birthday is on 13 September. Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) opens their season later this week with the monumental Gurre-Lieder featuring Clay Hilley, Dorothea Röschmann, and Karen Cargill, and led by OSM Music Director Rafael Payare. (The ten-year partnership between the orchestra and broadcaster Mezzo is prominently on display on the event page; one crosses fingers and toes for a recording from this to appear sooner rather than later.) In October the OSM and Payare have more Schoenberg in store: a recording of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande and Verklärte Nacht. Releasing via Pentatone on 11 October, the album (based on performances at Place des Arts this spring) comes on the heels of several Mahler-dedicated recordings, and offers a keen demonstration of the complementary artistic synergies and creative trust at work between orchestra, artists, administration, and audiences. (Please, more of this in Canada.)
Much sooner: On 10 September Opéra national de Paris offers a tantalizing introduction (at the Amphithéâtre Olivier Messiaen) to the company’s much-anticipated formal opening of the 2024-2025 season, Offenbach’s Les Brigands, pre-opening 19 September and opening night on the 21st. Director Barrie Kosky and General Director Alexander Neef will discuss various historical and musical aspects of the work. The introduction, like the autumn run, is sold out (which might offer some idea of just how anticipated this production is) – but as ever, one hopes for some form of online content from the presentation. (Bonjour, le FOMO est réel !) Kosky is perhaps the best person to explain Offenbach’s great, kooky work:
Awards season is here(ish): Opéra de national Paris’s presentation of Thomas Ades’s The Exterminating Angel by director Calixto Bieito is nominated for Best New Production at this year’s International Opera Awards. Other nominees in the category include Claus Guth’s staging of Khovanshchina at Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin) and Lydia Steier’s production of Don Carlos at Grand Théâtre de Genève. Nominated singers include Gerald Finley, Jonathan Tetelman, Klaus Florian Vogt, Lisette Oropesa, and Anna Pirozzi; conductors include Simone Young, Carlo Rizzi, Thomas Guggeis, and Emmanuelle Haïm. Benedikt von Peter, who is Theatre Basel’s Intendant and artistic director, is among six nominees in the Best Director category. (He has a busy autumn: his staging of Wagner’s Ring cycle continues with Siegfried on 28 September and Götterdämmerung on 30 September.) The ceremony for the International Opera Awards takes place in Munich on 2 October.
Still in Paris: Opéra Comique is presenting Picture a day like this at the end of October. The fourth collaboration between composer George Benjamin and writer Martin Crimp, the seven-scene opera explores various facets of grief through one woman’s eyes. Nimbus Records/Naxos have just releasedthe original recording of the work’s first presentation from 2023 at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence featuring mezzo soprano Marianne Crebassa as the unnamed Woman, together with sopranos Anna Prohaska and Beate Mordal; counter-tenor Cameron Shahbazi; and baritone John Brancy; composer Benjamin leads the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In an August review at Opera Ramblings, music writer John Gilks praised the recording for being ” extremely vivid and well balanced” and characterizes the singers as “terrific.” (I heartily agree, and then some.) The Opéra Comique presentation in October will feature the same cast as in Aix, with Benjamin on the podium and stage direction by Marie-Christine Soma and Daniel Jeanneteau.
Strauss à la Czech: A new album featuring soprano Kateřina Kněžíková and conductor Jakub Hrůša is being released on 20 September via Supraphon Records. Tag und nacht features the lieder of Richard Strauss for voice and piano, as well as Vier letzte Lieder with the Bamberger Symphoniker. Kněžíková, who has appeared with the Czech Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and on the stages of La Monnaie, Glyndebourne, and Opéra Royal de Versailles (to name a few), gives a deeply sensitive reading of well-known works like “Standchen”, “Morgen”, and “Das Rosenband”, mixing an intuitive musicality with an elegant and studious approach. Hrůša, Chief Conductor of the Bamberger Symphoniker and incoming music director of the Royal Opera Covent Garden (2025), gorgeously complements the soprano in these readings – one wonders if such pianistic collaboration might become a more regular public element of his musical arsenal. Like his Royal Opera predecessor Sir Antonio Pappano, Hrůša shows himself to be a true singer’s conductor. Tag und nacht is a recording for rainy autumn days and cool breezes, deserving of many careful re-listens through many cups of hot brandied tea. In a word: magic.
Also magic with voice and (mostly) piano: The music of composer Valentin Silvestrov, performed by pianist Alexei Lubimov and soprano Viktoriia Vitrenko. A new album featuring the artists was released back in August in a co-production between Sony Classical (Germany) and BR-KLASSIK. Titled forgotten word I wished to say, the work features Silvestrov’s 11-work vocal cycle Stufen, first recorded in Berlin in 1999 with Lubimov and soprano Jana Ivanilova; the cycle sets texts by a variety of Russian poets including Pushkin, Mandelstam, and Blok. The new album also features a variety of works for solo piano (including Silestrov’s intriguing 1977 cycle Kitsch-Musik) and feels especially poignant given the composer’s harrowing escape from his native Ukraine at the start of the war in 2022, not to mention Lubimov’s daring Moscow performance of Silvestrov’s work the same year.
Speaking out on the war is a dangerous thing indeed; my posting of last month’s reading list coincided with breaking news on the death of Pavel Kushnir. A young and largely unknown Russian musician who spoke out against the war in Ukraine on his Youtube channel, Kushnir was jailed and died as the result of a hunger strike; he has since become something of a martyr figure for many dissident artists. Last month twenty-two figures from the classical music world – Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim, and Martha Argerich among them – signed an open letter memorializing Kushnir, a missive initiated by pianist Alexander Melnikov and subsequently published in German newspaper FAZ. Kushnir’s many gifts have come to light since his death, including a 2014 novel, which takes the work of William Burroughs as a main inspiration. The work was rushed into print in Germany, and many of his performances, of both his own work and that of various classical greats, are being widely shared, along with some very touching memorials and remembrances.
A concert in Kushnir’s memory will be held in Potsdam on 19 September, marking what would have been his 40th birthday. (Alexei Lubimov is among the performers.) The organizer is Olga Shkrygunova, a childhood friend of the artist’s, who spoke at length with Van Magazin editor Hartmut Welscher last month. This performance by Kushnir, of the “April” movement in Tchaikovsky’s seasons, is one I especially love – it may be spring-like in name, but Kushnir’s interpretation is so gorgeously autumnal:
This performance is also a good example of the real, the human, the authentic – things I try to emphasize more than ever, to my students as much as myself. Ease is so tempting; comfort is so nice… and yet, as I tell them: do the work, and don’t be afraid of it, or how you might look in the process. An essay by Ted Chiang in The New Yorker recently examining the roles of creativity, humanity, process, & generative A.I. hits every important point, all in a tone that is the opposite of didactic. Chiang’s tone is friendly, conversational, casual – human, in other words; he makes a vital distinction between utilizing tools and actual doing, and underlines the need for process within that doing. What’s more, he tackles the perceived art/entertainment divide by noting the deeply human experience that drives and informs each. There’s also a line that directly speaks to my educator’s heart:
The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.
(Ted Chiang, “Why A.I. Isn’t Going To Make Art“, The New Yorker, 31 August 2023)
Relatedly, an essay published last month at Amor Mundi (via Bard College) pinpoints the problematic nature of paraphrased quotations, particularly those placed in a block format and popularized on social media, and in this case, specifically used as part of Vita Activa, a documentary about Hannah Arendt. Writer Roger Berkowitz, the Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College, uses Arendt as the entry point though the implications of his inquiry are far-reaching:
When a thinker’s words are silently reordered, cut, summarized, or simply made up, it is easy, too easy, to think that the words themselves are optional, that what matters is not the words and sentences Arendt wrote but the personal interpretation of the critic. The result is not that Arendt will necessarily be misunderstood, although she may, but that we come to accept the dangerous fact that misunderstandings are excused, that there is no true understanding and no truly Arendtian version of her texts.
(Roger Berkowitz, “On Fake Hannah Arendt Quotations”, Amor Mundi, 4 August 2024)
Words, meanings, understandings – good ideas to close this month’s reading / listening list. What better way to encapsulate them than with this jaunty (if deliciously dark) ditty “Gathering Mushrooms” by ModestMussorgsky? Sometimes what one doesn’t read between the lines can be the most poisonous ingredient of all. Happy foraging… ? 🙂
Top image: mine. Please do not reproduce without written permission.
The classical world continues to be in a state of transformation since the shutdowns forced by the coronavirus pandemic, with varied forms of transformation rippling through an array of houses, companies, and, perhaps most especially, people. I last spoke with English bass Brindley Sherratt in August 2020, when he and English tenor John Daszak were busy rehearsing an unusual, socially-distanced production of Boris Godunov directed by Barrie Kosky in Zürich. “You want to shout, ‘Opera’s not dead!‘” Sherratt commented, a needed buoy amidst the near-universal opera world gloom at the time.
Since then, Sherratt has applied that brand of encouragement to his own work. The bass’s first album of art songs, Fear No More, was released by Delphian Records in April. Recorded in 2023 at Henry Wood Hall in London, the album takes its title from a song by 20th century composer Gerald Finzi, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”, part of the composer’s Shakespeare-connected song cycle Let Us Garlands Bring (1929-1942) and itself based on lines from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Along with Finzi and fellow British composers John Ireland, Ivor Gurney, Michael Head, and Peter Warlock the album also features the music of Schubert, Strauss, and Mussorgsky. Booklet writer John Fallas notes in his album text that “not many singers record their first recital album two decades into a successful international career” – but one listen reveals a wealth of vocal riches underlining Sherratt’s deep musical intelligence and his innate understanding of text.
In a review of Fear No More for BBC Music magazine, writer Ashutosh Khandekar notes that “Sherratt possesses that rare gift – a genuine bass voice that carries its lyrical, expressive clarity from its ringing high notes right down to a full-toned basso profundo delivered without a trace of muddiness.” Indeed, Sherratt brings light, colour, texture, and a positively operatic splendour to the album’s smart lineup. Fear No More opens with six songs by Franz Schubert, all, with the exception of the famous “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (“Death and the Maiden”) written for a bass voice; Sherratt’s crisp diction, oaken tone, and colourful phrasing poetically illuminate the composer’s thoughtful vocal writing. Richard Strauss’s early 20th century song “Im Spätboot” follows and is given particularly a delicious reading. Songs and Dances of Death, Mussorgsky’s mesmerizingly macabre song cycle, is performed with a touching mix of terror and humanism. Sherratt especially soars in the English-language songs; John Ireland’s 1913 song “Sea-Fever” shows Sherratt’s careful modulation and colouration of the words of poet John Masefield, offering a masterclass in the art of storytelling through song.
That instinct for storytelling has also found expression in recitals, with the singer’s former reluctance around them replaced by something approaching glee. In addition to performances at Oxford Lieder Festival and Temple Music Foundation in 2022, Sherratt made his Wigmore Hall debut this past February, and more recitals are indeed in the works. There’s also a busy 2024-2025 opera season ahead, with performances of Billy Budd in Vienna, new productions of Semele in Paris and London, and a revival of Der Rosenkavalier in Munich. Sooner than that, Sherratt is set to perform in a BBC Proms presentation this August of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass with the Czech Philharmonic led by incoming Royal Opera House Music Director Jakub Hrůša; he will be singing alongside soprano Corinne Winters, mezzo soprano Bella Adimova, and tenor David Butt Philip.
A conversation with Sherratt is always a true pleasure, his easy mix of intelligence, passion, and kindness creating a natural, good-humoured exchange of ideas and experiences.
Brindley Sherratt recording Fear No More with pianist Julius Drake. Photo: foxbrush.co.uk
How did you choose the works on the album? You’d mentioned your love of text in a recent interview, and I wonder if that played a role.
It was indeed that love of text, but a lot of other things as well. I felt it was an incredibly risky thing to do an album at my age, with my voice – some of that feeling was in my own mind, but there were other fears related to there not being many basses doing recordings of lieder. Also there aren’t many basses my age, with an entire operatic career, suddenly switching to song. I met Julius Drake after a performance at Covent Garden and he said, “Why don’t you come around to my house on a Saturday morning and we’ll play around with a few pieces?” I said, “I don’t know what to sing!” He said, “Come around; we’ll work through some repertoire – let’s have a go.” So we did. We spent about three hours exploring this and that.
I wanted to choose things for the album that A/ I like, and B/ I think suit my voice. As a bass, and I’ve said this before, songs and recitals are like wearing your sibling’s hand-me-downs: you have to transpose down and adjust everything. I knew from the get-go that I wanted to include Schubert. As for Strauss: there are three or four songs that wrote specifically for the guy who first sang them (Paul Knüpfer), a bass who went on to be a famous Baron Ochs in Rosenkavalier, so I thought “Im Spätboot” was a good start. I’d already done some other Strauss songs with an orchestra – and I do love his writing so much.
Likewise the Mussorgsky cycle; I’d done Songs and Dances of Death with an orchestra two or three times, and I thought, gosh I’d love to do this with piano. Julius said, “Why don’t we just put them on the record?” I also thought I would like to do something in my own language and then it became a case of finding things I like.
There’s something extra special about the English songs – why these ones in particular?
When I was a student decades ago and had just started to sing – I was a trumpet player and switched to singing – I remember learning a few songs, and thinking, well, I’m a singer so of course I should sing songs. One of them was Finzi’s “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun” – I loved it ever since, but never had the chance to sing it because I’ve never done recitals. There’s something about this work, after all these years, that I still connect with, so I knew I had to include it on the album. For other songs, I had help: Sarah Connolly introduced me to “By A Bierside” (Ivor Gurney) – she said she thought it would suit me because it’s quite dramatic; Roderick Williams was a very big help also. He really knows his repertoire! I said to him, “Please help me out? Give me pointers as to what would suit me since you know my voice.” He’s been a very big source of information with the English song material. It’s like the TV show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” with contestants using a lifeline to call a friend and help them with a question – I phoned a friend, or rather several friends, who had done this repertoire and said “Hey, hello!”
On Being Pushed
Tell me more about your creative connection with Julius Drake – to what extent was he pianist, coach, mentor, critic… ?
He played all of those roles at some point – all of them. He kept saying, “Brin, you can do this” throughout. I would say, “Oh, I can’t sing this stuff, It’s too this, it’s too that.” And he said, “Come on, let’s keep going.” He would literally push me through the songs and offer ideas for others, and I would look at them and say, “Nah, don’t want that, it’s too boring” or “Maybe?” – and he was there to urge me on.
Brindley Sherratt recording Fear No More with collaborative pianist Julius Drake. Photo: foxbrush.co.uk
Did this form of coaching happen with your recitals as well?
Oh yes! Having not done a recital for 20-something years or more, there I was suddenly doing two recitals on two consecutive nights. Whilst we were preparing Julius would say things like “Not like that, we need more colour here.” I’d try something else and say, “Is that right?” And he’d say, “Nah, not right. Try something else.” We’d try this and that, and in that process I discovered a whole softer colour to my sound, one I didn’t know I could do. I was able to play around a lot more as a result, and Julius would push me: “Bring that sound”, “We need to bring this text out here”, “That was too slow”, “That was too fast”,“That was close to being chamber music!” The process was new to me.
With opera, it’s just such a huge scale, and sometimes you’ll have a conductor who will coach, like Tony Pappano – he gives loads of notes like “Just sing this way”, “Try it that way” and I love that approach – but opera is still this big long process. You’re on stage, you have other things and people to add and interact with. Also, I might have said this already in another interview: I prefer my audiences in the dark about 80 feet away with a symphony orchestra in-between. The kind of intimacy chamber music demands was the thing that I feared most, especially in terms of doing recitals; it also became the thing I enjoyed the most. There’s a great intimacy when it’s just me and a piano. This whole process has been a revelation.
Does that include your recital work?
Initially I was worried about those. I thought, “What if nobody comes?” Well, I went out and there were big crowds who gave big cheers and I thought, “Oh, this is great!” At Wigmore Hall in February the place was heaving with people. All the students I worked with were there along with every bass in the country, including John Tomlinson. I found it overwhelming, though it also made me think that maybe I’m okay at this stuff; I need to trust that feeling.
Do you think recitals and art songs have made you a better opera singer?
I think so, yes. I was doing Rocco in Fidelio (in Munich) this year, and Gurnemanz a year or more ago, and I found I used a lot of soft colours which I would have not have used before. Those softer colours are really important, especially to basses, as you know. I feel much more rounded as a singer, and the songs (on the album) were great for that kind of work.
Keeping The Voice “As Fresh As Possible”
What have you learned about your voice through the last decade or so?
There was a stage I went through actually about eight or ten years ago where I wanted to make a big noise. At one point I thought, “I don’t think I’m singing healthily.” Going back to Gurnemanz, when I was first learning that part years back I was listening to Gottlob Frick, who is my favourite German bassist of all. He was 68 when he recorded Parsifal; he came out of retirement to do it. Having had a long career singing the heaviest roles, the Hagens and the Hundings, over and over and over again, here he is at 68 – when really the voice should be starting to wear a bit – and my God, he sounds so good, so vulnerable – it’s just sublime, beautiful singing. When I heard it I thought: I want to be able to do that.
It was while I was singing I was singing Ochs at Glyndebourne (2018) that I found a much more, what’s the word, a more contained and less fat kind of sound; I purposely took my voice down a little bit and worked. That moment was the foundation, as it were, because when I started to learn and sing songs, I realized that I want to be able to sing “Some Enchanted Evening” and have it be beautiful – that, or Winterreise, or Finzi’s “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”. I want people to say, “That’s a beautiful voice” and not “That’s a ragged old voice.” So I think the combination of songs and opera is important to keep the voice as fresh as possible at my age.
What role does teaching play?
I coach a lot of young basses, bass baritones too, and for so many of them the pressure is on in their 20s in terms of making a career, and so they all want to sound as loud as possible. What happens is they go into a young artists program and they’re on stage with guys who really know what they’re doing, but they have to match it, or feel like they do, so they try to make their voice big before it’s kind of found its way. There are so few roles for young low voices – it’s a lot of Second Old Man or Third Gatekeeper – but young artists feel forced to make big sounds so early on, and I’m always saying to them now, “Learn songs, sing songs; learn a few cycles; learn Handel, and more Handel; listen to various artists.” I think you need to have that balance, and the confidence too – we definitely need to have that!
Photo: Benjamin Ealovega
A second album?
Which songs might be in the future for you, on record or live in recital?
I think everyone wants to sing Winterreise, and I admit to being one of them! It’s an incredibly intimidating cycle but I find it so enchanting; I love listening to it and I love singing it. I’d want to do it in recital a few times before I went anywhere even near a recording studio. So that’s a possibility. I’ve also been thinking I would like to do a disc of songs in my mother tongue, and at the moment I’m leaning towards an album of English song; I asked Ryan Wigglesworth if he would write me something, and he’s up for that. Robert Lloyd said to me many years ago, “Make sure you do a song recital once a year; It’s so easy to just bellow” – it’s so true.
I was amazed in the recitals to note that after I’d sung a few phrases that are quiet and soft, I could sense everyone leaning in and really listening – it was just lovely! I never would have thought of having that kind of closeness with an audience, but it’s been amazing, and I definitely look forward to more moments like that.
The end of January may be grey and cold, but online the time is considerably enriched by various classical artists and organizations marking Schubert’s birthday. The German composer (1797-1828) is known for his beloved song cycles Die schöne Müllerin (1823), Winterreise (1827) and Schwanengesang (1828), all of which use texts by German writers and poets to explore deeply human experiences – wonder, longing, love, sadness, loss.
Opéra Comique is offering their own thoughtful salute to the composer with L’Autre Voyage (The Other Journey), opening on 1 February. Combining selections of Schubert’s music with fragments of poetry (by Heine, Goethe, and others) the work features the central figure of a forensic doctor whose recognition of his dead doppelganger catalyzes important personal explorations. With direction and libretto by theatre artist Silvia Costa and musical direction by Raphaël Pichon, the work offers a fascinating insight into the lasting impact of Schubert’s oeuvre as well as the text that fuelled his creative inspiration and continues to inspire its interpreters, including Voyage lead Stéphane Degout.
The French baritone’s passion for text and music has translated into an immensely engaging approach over baroque, classical, romantic, modern, and contemporary repertoires. Degout has sung title roles in a number of famous works including Monteverdi’s Orfeo and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, Debussy’s Pelléas et Melisande, Conti’s Don Chisciotte, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and Thomas’ Hamlet. He has graced the stages of Opéra de Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Berlin Staatsoper, Bayerische Staatsoper, Theater an der Wien, Teatro alla Scala, De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam, Opernhaus Zurich, Lyric Opera Chicago, and The Metropolitan Opera in New York. Festival appearances include Salzburg, Saint Denis, Glyndebourne, Edinburgh, and Aix-en-Provence. In 2022 Degout won the Male Singer of the Year at the International Opera Awards, and the following year became Master-in-Residence of the vocal section at Belgium’s prestigious Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, having been recommended to the role by baritone José van Dam, the organization’s then-Master-in-Residence. The two baritones share a long history, having first appeared onstage together in a 2003 production of Messiaen’s Saint Françoise d’Assise at the RuhrTriennale.
Degout has also worked extensively with conductor Raphaël Pichon and his Pygmalion ensemble, onstage, on tours, and across a range of lauded recordings. The 2018 album Enfers (harmonia mundi) features a deliciously dark selection of works by French composers (Gluck, Rebel, Rameau), while 2022’s Mein Traum (harmonia mundi) explores dreams via pieces by Schubert, Weber, Schumann, and Liszt. This past December Pichon led his Pygmalion on a European tour of Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah with Degout as a soloist alongside Siobhan Stagg, Ema Nikolovska, Thomas Atkins, and Julie Roset. But famed historic works are not, as was mentioned, Degout’s sole territory; the baritone has performed and often been directly involved with the creation numerous contemporary operas, including Benoît Mernier’s La Dispute (2013), Philippe Boesmans’ Au Monde (2014; both La Monnaie), and Pinocchio (2017) also by Boesmans and commissioned by the annual Aix-en-Provence Festival. British composer George Benjamin wrote the role of The King in his intense 2018 opera Lessons in Love and Violence (premiered at at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden) specifically for Degout’s voice.
That voice is as much at home in intimate settings as opera stages. His 2021 performance as the title character in Berg’s Wozzeck with Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse garnered high praise from French media, with music magazine Diapason praising the singer’s mix of power and delicacy and proclaiming “Victoire absolue pour Stéphane Degout”. Such a special combination of intensity and lyricism was shown to full effect in 2022 with chamber orchestra recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (b.records) with French ensemble Le Balcon, and in 2023, via Brahms’ song cycle La Belle Maguelone (b.records) in a recording captured live at Théâtre de l’Athénée Louis-Jouvet and featuring pianist Alain Planès, mezzo soprano Marielou Jacquard, and speaker Roger Germser. This spring Degout will be using his magical blend of power and sensitivity in the little-known opera Guercœur with Opera national du Rhin. The work, penned by French composer Albéric Magnard between 1897 and 1901 but only presented live in 1931, wears its Wagnerian influences on its sleeve while deftly distilling both the grandeur of late Romanticism and the immediacy of European song craft.
Such a blend of music and narrative seems central to the more immediate L’Autre Voyage, described by Opéra Comique’s Agnès Terrier as “Ni reconstitution, ni nouvel opéra” (neither reconstruction nor new opera). Instead, Voyage positions itself as a wholly original theatrical piece showcasing the very things that so informed Schubert’s creativity, not to mention the public’s continuing fascinating with him: “le doute, la fantaisie, la solitude, l’élan spirituel” (doubt, fantasy, solitude, spiritual impulse). Voyage runs through mid-February and will be recorded by French public broadcaster France Musique for March broadcast on Samedi à l’opéra. Degout will also be presenting a recital of Schubert’s famed Winterreise with pianist Alain Planès at Opéra Comique on February 14th.
Earlier this month the busy baritone took time out of his rehearsal schedule to share thoughts on the importance of text, not taking one’s mother tongue for granted, and the important reminders teaching offers.
Photo: Jean-Baptiste Millot
How extensively do you study the immediate text as well as contemporaneous writing and music?
I always do this for every part I sing. I like to know the contextual things – poetry, literature, history, everything – it’s very interesting how it just puts me in, I wouldn’t say the mood, but offers clues and connections with the time of the music. This particular period of Schubert’s is very rich in opera works of course, but every country and every culture has a specificity and I study that accordingly. I will sing Onegin in June, and though it’s later in the 19th century than Schubert, it also has a great connection with Romanticism of the 19th century. So yes, I do read a lot!
To what extent do you think mood in music shifts according to the language, especially for something like L’Autre Voyage?
I’m not sure if you’ve seen the series of conversations between Daniel Barenboim and Christoph Waltz, but in one of them Barenboim says it’s obvious in the music of some composers what their mother tongue is. So it’s obvious with Beethoven that he’s a German speaker from the way he writes music and puts harmonies together and places weight on certain elements within bars – that thinking extends to works in German, French, Russian. I don’t know Russian well enough to be aware, but such an idea is obvious to me in French and German. (Barenboim) also deals with the tempo, that you can’t do the music faster than the maximum you can speak or sing the language – sometimes the centre gives. It’s a sort of technical point, but the mood is given by the language, by the construction of the phrase – and as you know, German has a specific grammar where you have to wait for the end of the phrase to really know the whole thing.
When the language itself is used within a poetic construction, it’s beautiful for sure but it’s also more difficult; you have to be able to get everything at the same time in order to really get it. With L’Autre Voyage sometimes there are altered phrases and words to make connections between these different works more logical – Silvia Costa changed the text, but she worked very carefully on being as close as she could to the original linguistic specificity.
Stéphane Degout (L) and Siobhan Stagg (R) with Chœur Pygmalion in L’Autre Voyage at Opéra Comique. Photo: Stefan Brion
“I’m very close to the text”
How have these working relationships influenced your approach to different material, whether it’s new material or historical material?
Maybe it’s because I’m a baritone, it makes me more, let’s say… on the spoken side of the music. I’m very close to the text, it’s something I also happen to love – poetry and the languages , talking, conversation. I’ve been lucky because almost all of my repertoire is really based on the language. If we stay with French repertoire, Rameau and the Baroque stuff I did with Raphaël, it’s singing on the notes, it’s declamation, it’s clarity. With German lieder and composers like Wolf and Schubert and Schumann, they all have such respect for the primary material they have – the text and the poetry – so you can’t forget the music, but it’s not the music that drives you through the text; it’s the text that drives you through the music. It’s even more obvious to me because I’m a native French speaker – these things come immediately to my ear. With works by composers like Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, it’s clear they all have first read the respective texts and fallen in love with them, and thought they could make something with the music. But the text – it’s not an excuse to make music; it is the central point of all things. Perhaps I notice this more because when I was a teenager I did theatre and so more talking than singing on stage, I don’t know! (laughs)
As a native French speaker, what’s it like to return to singing in your own language?
The difficulty when we sing in our own language is that we don’t care so much. It is this feeling of, ‘well it’s my language so I don’t need to make an effort’ – but I know I do need to make extra effort. I speak German, I have studied it, so it gives me a sort of extra comfort in singing it; I know the structure and pronunciation but occasionally there I also need a bit of an extra hand, someone to say, ‘it’s right but it doesn’t sound German, it sounds like a foreigner talking in German.’ These language explorations are really fascinating. I have been working with young singers for a few years now and we talk a lot about this issue, and it’s great to see that they have the same comforts and difficulties that I had 25 years ago when I started. It’s a common thing.
What has teaching given you as a singer? What are its challenges?
The difficulty of teaching is putting words on things I do naturally. I’ve been singing professionally for almost three decades now; I don’t need to think very technically or consider what I’m doing physically – it’s just here. But when I have to help a young singer who is struggling with some technical things, breathing issues or whatever, I need to explain exactly, because I hear what’s wrong but need to help to correct it clearly, and this is the difficulty. So, I’m learning to teach, let’s say. It’s sort of a mirror of my own experience, and sometimes hearing a young singer struggling makes me think of the way I’ve done things myself when I was struggling with those same issues.
“Every body is different, every voice is different; it’s not an instrument made in a factory”
Has teaching created a deeper awareness of your own approach?
Yes, very much! We did a concert in Belgium in November, I was one of the singers, and during the concert I realized I didn’t do what I said to the others in the days before when we were rehearsing. Basically I joke about things like that and say: do as I say, not as I do!
There’s also value in being honest with students and saying, “Look, I can teach you the basics, but with some things, my system works for me and it might not work for you.”
Yes, there are basics – breathing, using muscles, pronunciations – but everyone eventually has their own technique, because every body is different, every voice is different; it’s not an instrument made in a factory. Every instrument maker will tell you every instrument is unique…
… and different experiences and backgrounds – context – which will influence what comes out. How does that influence your work with living composers?
It’s been interesting. With George Benjamin, for instance, the work was very specific. He was extremely precise with his own work and what he wanted. It’s exactly what I said before, the text and respect for it, George is really into writing music where the text is very clear and natural. He used virtuosity in his writing for Barbara (Hannigan) because she has this big range she can use, but for me and my character, he used the spoken side of my voice. When he and I first met, I was still in my Pelléas time, with this very clear, high sound; he gave me the score and I saw the part wasn’t written that high – it was surprising – but in working on it and learning the music, I realized that he there was no need to write something that was more important than the text. That’s the way I understood it.
How collaborative was the atmosphere?
I felt very comfortable and confident with him as a conductor, because of course he knew his work well, so he could help us in the meanings as well as the performing. He changed maybe three things with me, things which were more related to the length of notes and breathing; the changes were more naturally aligned to my own way of singing than what he’d written for me.
I don’t know if you know, we met about two years before the presentation, and spent an afternoon together; he was measuring my voice in every direction, how high, how low, how big, how soft. It was quite intimidating and impressive at the same time. He remembered every aspect of my voice from that day, so the part was perfectly written. Also Martin (Crimp, librettist) and other poets had their own music which sat within the material, I can’t quite say what it is because English isn’t my first language – but I knew it was specific, that it was text which involved not merely giving information on the situation. It also helped that (director) Katie Mitchell was observant of our specifics around how we move and speak.
You’re doing another new-ish opera, Guercœur, in the spring. There are so many operas which are only now coming into the public consciousness…
… yes, it’s true. Guercœur was the idea of (Opéra national du Rhin General Director) Alain Perroux, who has wanted to do it for a long time. I didn’t know about this opera before he told me about its story. The work has, as you probably know, a very unusual history. The composer died before he ever heard this music done live, two-thirds of the original score was lost in a fire, but (composer/conductor) Guy Ropartz saved some and reconstructed the orchestration. It was recorded in 1951 and again in 1986 with a cast that included José Van Dam, and only presented live once, in Germany in 2019 – and this is an opera written more than 100 years ago! The presentation in the spring feels as if it will be a new creation itself, in a way.
“When he sang, I could feel the vibrations”
You mentioned Van Dam, who indeed is part of the recording of Guercœur – can you describe his influence?
When I was in the Conservatoire we listened to a lot of his CDs and everyone liked his voice very much. And though we don’t have the same repertoire really, he was the type of artist I wanted to become when I was young. I first met him over twenty years ago when we did Saint François d’Assise in Germany – I was so impressed to be onstage with him. At that time I was singing the role of Frère Léon, the novice of St. François. There’s a moment in the first scene of the opera where François talks with Léon about different things; in the staging Van Dam was next to me, with his arm around me, so our bodies were basically in contact from shoulders to the knee. When he sang I could feel the vibrations – from shoulder to the knee. That was a non-talking lesson, maybe the best one I ever had, and I thought, okay, this is singing; singing is not only involving the mouth – it’s the whole body. That was such an emotional moment. I’ve worked with him since, and we have a great confidence with each other.
I’m very lucky and happy he asked me to replace him at the Chapel. We don’t really talk about this but I can feel we have the same sort of way of doing things, of approaching the music, of being onstage. I’ve seen him teaching there; he doesn’t say much, but does speak about text, diction, language, and that one should be right about the vowels – those small but important details. They’re the key, and I totally agree with him. I’ve always perceived Van Dam as a very calm person, with his feet planted on the earth, that it all comes naturally. I’m also this kind of person, I think – earthy – so yes, it is a special connection indeed.
September has arrived though, at least in my part of the world, related cooler temperatures have yet to appear. Still, there is a marked change when it comes to the formal end of summer holidays. The “most wonderful time of the year” for parents is also the big inhalation for those of us working in the education system; the feelings I remember as a child at this time (dread; excitement; anxiety) have, in adulthood, whittled down to something leaner if no less energetic (anticipation; impatience). The return of structure and its first cousin, predictability, are pluses, though they’re hardly immobile; schedules, due dates, and outlines bump against individual and collective needs, abilities, and personalities, as well they must. Being an Adjunct Professor means not so much juggling as knitting – in new patterns, constantly, never quite sure what you’re making or to what end, at least until the conclusion of term. Here’s hoping the blanket (or whatever it is) proves useful to more than a few.
September also marks the start of the arts season, a time when the choices announced many months ago are realized and suddenly take on harder, thicker edges. Programming and concomitant production are more interlinked than ever, but understanding that link is proving more and more difficult. Just weeks after American magazine Opera News announced its imminent closure, prestigious German classical publication Fono Forumsent a note to its contributors indicating its final edition will be in January 2024. As I wrote with regards to ON last month: I am not surprised, particularly given the current state of media, and arts-dedicated media in particular. Publishing is pricy, audiences are splintered; algorithms and related ROI lead many away from niche publishing and toward the sort of output that tends to clash with the things culture (at least some of it) might perhaps inspire: slowing down; abstract thought; careful evaluation. Finding people willing to pay to read things at all is the toughest task for media in the 21st century; finding people willing to pay for things which might further inspire such focus is even harder; finding people willing to pay for coverage of a very niche interest is triply difficult. Classical does not (for the most part) inspire sexy clicks; the question is, should it, and can it? Are there people who don’t mind? Can those who make faces afford to keep making faces? I do think there are, and will be, other means and methods; whether they will have any quick and sexy ROI is another matter. It’s going to take time and that thing Axl sang about; to quote Hamlet (again), ’tis true ’tis pity, and pity ’tis ’tis true.
In Berlin
Also true: Komische Oper Berlin (KOB) is opening its new season with a very coverage-worthy event. The company’s first production away from its usual Behrenstraße locale is being done with a big (possibly literal) splash. Hans Werner Henze’s oratorio Das Floß der Medusa is being staged in an old airport hangar at Templehof, with seating located around a huge body of water designed especially for the production. Director Tobias Kratzer, notable for his work at a range of houses, including Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bayreuth , and Opéra de Paris, here leads a cast featuring Gloria Rehm, Idunnu Münch, Günter Papendell, 83 musicians, and over 100 choristers, all under the baton of conductor Titus Engel.
The work is based on real history: the wreck of French naval ship Méduse ran off the coast of western African in 1816. While the ship’s captains saved themselves and escaped, over 150 others took to a raft, which they stayed on (or tried to stay on when they weren’t gouging each others’ eyes out or committing suicide) for thirteen days; only fifteen people would survive the disaster. Théodore Géricault famously depicted the wreck in his monumental painting a scant three years after the event, interviewing Méduse’s survivors and examining the flesh of cadavers as he worked. Henze’s 1968 oratorio is a kind of veiled (or not-so-veiled) political statement on the issues which sit foremost within the tragedy. Its premiere inspired clashes between protestors (some pro-communist; some anarchist), the RIAS choir, and police who had come to break up the scuffles; Ernst Schnabel, who wrote the text, was among those arrested. Henze revised the score in 1990, and the work has been presented, in concert and full production formats many times since. Its relevance, particularly for this time in history, is unmissable. As Opera Today’s Anne Ozorio wrote in her masterful review of a 2018 presentation by Dutch National Opera:
… Géricault was painting when the wreck of the Medusa was still raw political scandal. The rich had left the poor to die. What Géricault depicted was not lost on audiences at the time. The real horror is that modern audiences refuse to connect, even though we’re surrounded by images or war, destruction and refugees drowning at sea. Even if the press don’t know Henze, which is bad enough, surely some might have the humanity to think ?
The new KOB production was slated for five performances but a sixth was added out of sheer demand. Get thee to Templehof.
Also in Berlin
The European premiere of Chief Hijangua – A Namibian Opera in Four Acts by composer/conductor/baritone Eslon Hindundu takes place this month. The work features a libretto by Nikolaus Frei and will enjoy a semi-staged presentation by Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB). The multitalented Hindundu has performed and conducted in numerous events and festivals (including Swakopmunder Musikwoche, an annual music event held in Swakopmund, Namibia, and Germany’s annual autumn Immling Festival), and led the Namibian National Symphony Orchestra (as the organization’s Music Director) in the opera’s world premiere at the National Theatre of Namibia, Windhoek in 2022. The upcoming Berlin presentation will be directed by Kim Mira Meyer (who often works with Munich’s Gärtnerplatztheater) and will feature the vocal talents of Berlin-based Cantus Domus and Vox Vitae Musica (a choral group founded by Hindundu); the opera utilizes both German and Otjiherero, one of the languages spoken by Namibians. The work is a clear reference to Germany’s brutal colonization of Namibia in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, in which (according to a report from DW) roughly 100,000 people were killed and numerous atrocities committed. The opera itself tells a personal story, with its theme (the search for identity) sewn into its depiction detailing the quest of a young prince.
Chief Hijangua is being presented at a pivotal point within the classical world, as calls rise for greater social relevance in an art form frequently derided for being out of touch with real-world concerns and lived experiences. Opera warhorses (and related old productions) are frequently programmed now to get covid-scared audiences back into the auditorium; in places where government funding is scant, that is a reality that can’t be ignored. But as The Met itself noted, box office (at least in New York) is being made with precisely with, and not despite, new works. Maybe classical organizations need to be slightly braver with their choices? Maybe a little more trust in audiences would be a good thing? Might this be more than a mere trend? Perhaps Chief Hijangua will receive further productions in international venues? It seems the RSB, along with showcasing Hindundu’s considerable talents, is celebrating their 100th birthday with a powerful symbol of creativity whilst simultaneously throwing down a gauntlet to the greater opera world. Chief Hijuanga runs for three performances at Berlin’s Haus des Rundfunks, and is being done in partnership with Deutschlandfunk Kultur.
In London
History, literature, music, and theatre all mix at the Barbican Centre in London this month with King Stakh’s Wild Hunt. Based on the popular 1964 novel by Belarusian writer Uladzimir Karatkievich, the work mixes folk mythology and pointed social commentary related to ongoing political repression in Belarus. Co-director Nicolai Khalezin calls it a story that “combines mysticism and reality, love and hatred, nobility and cowardice, history and modernity.” The work is being presented by Belarus Free Theatre (BFT), an underground theatre group who were forced into exile in 2021, and who count actors Kim Cattrall and Jeremy Irons, rock musician David Gilmour, and playwright Tom stoppard among their supporters. King Stakh features a score by Olga Podgaiskaya, a composer and active member of Belarusian avant-garde chamber group Five-Storey Ensemble, who will be performing as part of the production.
Conductor Vitali Alekseenok, who leads the musical side, is currently Artistic Director of the annual Kharkiv Music Fest in Ukraine, and wrote about his experience there earlier this summer. In London he leads a troupe which will feature Ukrainian singers Andrei Bondarenko and Tamara Kalinkina, and is being helmed by co-founding BFT Artistic Directors Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada. The latter’s own father recorded the novel in 2009 for an audio book (portions of which will be used in the production). She notes that her father had urged her to stage the novel for years, “not just because it’s one of the greatest Belarusian novels of the last century, but because he deeply understood its relevance.” The work, she continues, “reminds us that the past is not dead, it’s here in Europe today”. Kaliada’s father is unfortunately no longer alive to see the fruits of his daughter’s labour, but its realization is a strong sign of hope, and needed ongoing resistance to Belarusian repressions. King Stakh has its world premiere at the Barbican and will run for four performances.
Remembering…
Loss seems like a subtext through many upcoming presentations, and indeed it felt much closer this weekend. On Saturday it was announced that Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama has passed away at the age of 93. The Japanese artist, who survived a horrendous wartime internment on the west coast of Canada, was responsible for many famous landmarks in the country, including the Canadian War Museum, the Japanese-Canadian Centre (now called the Noor Cultural Centre), Science North, the Ontario Science Centre, as well as the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. In 2003 Moriyama was made a member of the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun (4th class), an award conferred in recognition of his services to Japanese culture in Canada. In 2009 he was the recipient of a Canadian Governor-General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2009. The awards were just two of the numerous honors the architect collected during his lifetime. I’ve always found Moriyama’s work to be musical, possessing its own distinct resonance; as a child I used to visit the Scarborough Civic Centre and look up and around in awe.
Growing older I visited other locales (mentioned above), and would silently wonder at his use of texture, shape, light, and structure. He created a smart, daringly (for the time and place) spiritual balance of notable contrasts (rich/stark; old/new; dark/light), providing a full experience of form that reaches well past the visual. I hear Stravinsky’s 1930 work Symphony of Psalms whenever I look at his work now. This 2020 documentary by Ontario public broadcaster TVO clearly shows why Moriyama and his work will always be a treasure. (Note: some may need a VPN to view this, but it’s definitely worth it).
Finally: I learned of the untimely passing of Maxim Paster yesterday morning, and spend a good chunk of the day (and night) listening to and watching a range of performances by the Kharkiv-born tenor. His repertoire was immensely wide (Puccini; Tchaikovsky; Bizet; Berg; Prokofiev; Strauss –Richard and Johann; Rimsky-Korsakov; Donizetti; Verdi; Mussorgsky) but barely captured his talent. Making his Bolshoi debut in 2003, Paster would perform with many prestigious institutions indeed – Opéra de Paris, Bayerische Staatsoper, The Metropolitan Opera, Semperoper Dresden, Teatro Alla Scala, the Salzburg Festival. He was rightly famous for his Shuisky in Boris Godunov, performing in a variety productions on an assortment of stages, including the Bolshoi, Opéra Bastille (Paris), The Met, and Teatro Comunale (Bologna). Paster’s commitment to music possessed an innate humility; this was an artist who very clearly humbled himself before whatever was in front of him, placing his entire self into the service of the text and music, and of rendering them as one. In so doing he gave us something personal, not performative – emotional, not sentimental – thus making the music immediate and very real. Witness his care with the words of Sergei Yesenin in this 2019 performance of Rostislav Boyko’s “Moon Above The Window”:
That voice, flinty and flexible, went hand-in-hand with a deep theatrical understanding. Paster understood, so well, the large value of small gestures. A turn of a torso; a cock of a head; the lift of a hand; slow, deliberate inhalations and exhalations, visible for all to see – such combinations, when done with such elegant economy as what Paster employed, quietly opened doors of perception and understanding, and made one hungry for more. There are very few artists who are so knowing in their creative choices, and whose vocal expression is so utterly attuned with a composer’s imagination – and that of an audience. Paster embodied an artistic authenticity as rare as it is remarkable. He died at the age of 47, still with so much left to offer to music, art, the world.
News of Paster’s passing made for a grim start to September, a month of change, and perhaps some needed reflection on that imminent change. “One hasn’t got time for the waiting game,” to quote Weill’s famous song, with words by Maxwell Anderson. “September Song”, interestingly, made its entry into the world on September 26, 1938 as part of the trial run of the musical Knickerbocker Holiday in Hartford, Connecticut. The “waiting game” need only be played out a few more days before my much-promised feature interview with BSO Recordings Managing Director Guido Gärtner is published. Until then, watch, listen, read, attend… think, rethink, evaluate… slowly.
Since our last conversation in early 2021, bass baritone Christian Immler has been busy. As was the case with many artists, the bass baritone’s schedule changed dramatically as a result of pandemic-related lockdowns; his approach to music, as you’ll read in our recent conversation below, didn’t change but intensified and expanded, particularly within the realms of score study, synergy with colleagues, and active public engagement.
In December 2022 Immler performed with the Czech Philharmonic and conductor Semyon Bychkov in the lauded world premiere of Prager Symphony, Lyric Fragments after Franz Kafka (Symphony No. 4) by contemporary German composer Detlev Glanert. Based directly on the work of Franz Kafka (including his letters, short stories, novels, and fragments from his notebooks) the work is an immense, daring exploration of the lyric symphonic form, with scoring for orchestra and two voices (bass baritone and mezzo), spread over twelve sections. As the composer told Bachtrack just prior to the premiere, the work is “a psychological landscape, where two people tell us something about ourselves: a story of life from the very beginning to the end, plus all human circumstances you can imagine: being witty, the pain of violence, happiness, and so on.” Prager Symphony will be presented again later this year, with Bychkov and Immler – in June, with the Concertgebouw and Gewandhaus respectively, and the UK premiere happening in November with the BBC Symphony.
Along with learning and performing the Glanert work, the bass baritone also released the album Das heiße Herz (Alpha Classics) with pianist Andreas Frese, featuring the music of Robert Schumann and contemporary German composer Jörg Widmann. Released in mid-2022, the work features songs from Schumann’s 1849 cycle Lieder und Gesänge aus ‘Wilhelm Meister’ (text by Goethe) as well as the composer’s 1850 cycle ‘6 Gedichte von N. Lenau und Requiem’; the world-premiere recording of Widmann’s Heisse Herz (The Burning Heart) comprises the album’s second half, with Immler conveying a stunning (and stunningly controlled) level of musicality, sometimes utilizing sprechstimme to exude the emotional intensity Widmann’s writing necessitates. A review in Opera News early this year (which singled the album out for its monthly Critics Choice designation) noted the degree to which Immler “shows a performance artist’s mastery of the work’s considerable demands, as does the fearless (pianist) Frese, who thunders, tremolos and occasionally slams the keyboard or strums the inside, in addition to playing with great tenderness when called upon.”
Our recent conversation began by my asking Immler about his fascinating exploration of the little-known music of Wilhelm Grosz (1984-1939) and Robert Gund (also spelled Gound; 1865-1927) which use texts by a range of celebrated European writers, including Eduard Mörike (1804-1875), Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857), and Clemens Brentano (1778-1842). The album, set for release in early 2025 on Alpha Classics, sees Immler reunite with pianist Helmut Deutsch, with whom he previously collaborated on a gorgeous 2021 album showcasing the largely unknown music of Hans Gál. The thought of Immler and the pianist reuniting for a project featuring music few know well (or are aware of at all) is a needed bit of hope amidst a still-difficult classical environment.
Immler is just embarking on an extensive Northern European tour, performing the work of another composer whose works he knows well; St. Matthew Passion is being presented by famed Bach conductor Masato Suzuki and the Netherlands Bach Society in twelve different locales between March 25th and April 8th. Before the tour began Immler took time to offer thoughts on everything from covid-related cancellations to the earthy writing of both Bach and contemporary composers. Immler is always inspiring to speak with, whether he’s discussing the finer points of scores, sharing the realities of singing works of rarely-heard composers, or how the simple act of breathing informs and influences musicianship; our recent midwinter exchange was, quite simply, a joy.
Christian Immler and Helmut Deutsch. Photo: Marcus Boman
How’s your work with Helmut Deutsch coming along?
It’s great! We both love this repertoire. There are cases where something will seem like a good idea and then you work with someone, in a duo, and it’s one person pulling the other – but not with Helmut, not at all. We both pull in one direction. With this repertoire, it is really a total discovery. I’m not unused to reading through unfamiliar repertoire but this time there is the added thrill of manuscripts – that’s all there is – so we had to transfer them into Sibelius, all these songs composed as lieder. We did a test run for an audience of around ten people, and had to preface it with, “this is most likely the very first performance of this song cycle!”
What has your process been so far?
Helmut has been cursing me – playfully – for introducing him to this repertoire. The Grosz is very difficult to play; there are so many things are happening at the same time in the piano lines, and he says he needs a few more fingers. Nobody realizes how difficult it is, again, because this repertoire is so unknown. We don’t talk very much, a couple of times we verbalize what we want but the rest is push-pull, and listening.
Listening seems vital, whether it’s for a duo project or for larger performances, like Glanert’s Prager Symphony.
A lot of people can listen if they don’t do anything else, but if you have to do your work, playing and singing, and listen at the same time – that’s a special skill set, because you need to do what you do, and intrinsically listen to the other person at the same time. Helmut knows the text, and I know his piano part very well; sometimes I’ll look more down to what he’s doing and not only to my singer’s part. You have to process a lot at the same time. Also, we need to breathe – everybody knows that – but you wouldn’t believe how many conductors ultimately have no idea what that means; Semyon does. He and Helmut both use their breath as a means of expressivity, and it makes all the difference. When they intuitively run out of breath, they renew themselves. So it’s natural, we both do it. If you have well-written repertoire that breath comes very naturally anyway, but if it’s mediocre writing, and the phrases are really long, you think, “okay, I have to take an odd breath here” but it doesn’t usually happen with good composers.
That synergy is interesting given your recent projects use texts by authors who are long dead and/or did not write specifically for singers.
It is known that Kafka, although he did not have an aversion to music, did not want some of his texts set to music..
… and yet!
… yes, Max Brod didn’t quite comply there! He didn’t burn the papers Kafka had written after his death. Glanert and Widmann have both said that at a certain point, they have to let their work go. Both are very experienced, so it means at one point they realize it’s no longer controlled by them, and they accept performers might have a slightly different viewpoint or approach, and I think there is a wisdom in this. They’re both great at letting things go. Glanert was present during rehearsals with the Czech Phil and took notes, and when there were moments of difficulty, instruments groups were too soft or loud or whatever, he, without running to the stage and making a fuss, would take notes, and Semyon would come and they’d communicate about it. The process was super-fluid in terms of it being a true work-in-progress situation. We didn’t have many rehearsals of that, either.
The subsequent performances of it this year may have more rehearsals, then?
I have a huge advantage now because I know the piece, but for orchestras, it’s different. Mind you, those other orchestras – the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Leipzig Gewandhaus – are super-orchestras, even with their different approaches. And I have to say also: the Czech Phil is stunning, just… top.
To what extent do you think these songs, and Kafka’s texts, have acquired a new relevance?
It’s funny, that work, as well as the songs I’m doing with Helmut and the theme of my doctoral research, it’s all on work done roughly 100 years ago – yet these poems, at this very moment, in my opinion, have an incredible modernity and relevance. You read some of them, and … well, so I read The Guardian in the mornings, and you see these terrible things about the war in Ukraine, and you see these works, and they resonate as a part of our time, right now.
How does this work and the Widmann speak to that time? And how much do you think listening as a result of that time changed?
Both Widmann and Glanert have a lot of experience in the operatic field and a high level of awareness. They won’t waste opportunities in sound; if they want a big turmoil they know how to create it, and likewise they can create the absence of sound and the power of pauses and stillness. They totally understand – it’s quite unsettling in the Glanert, you think, holy! You could hear a needle drop. It only happens if the ear is preconditioned in the writing, and both of them can do this very well.
For me, and so many who experienced an unprecedented level of isolation and loneliness, and a lack of outside distraction if you will, there was a total feeling of insecurity of what is going to happen. Nobody knew. I find in a lot in these poems, especially in the Kafka texts, there is a sense of basically trying to come out of that situation by saying, “Okay, let’s state we are lonely, and the only way we can kind of overcome this is by stating it first of all and being aware of it, and then sticking together.” This first Kafka text, if you read it, it’s so strong, it states: we are lonely yet we are interconnected by a network of invisible threads, and it’s bad enough if they loosen, but it’s terrible if one of them falls. That, to a certain degree, is what we all experienced in early 2020.
But somehow there is a hope through humanity, and that sounds grand, but these songs don’t leave you feeling dark, they leave you with a sense of… hope is not enough… but that there’s a chance for humanity. And it’s an important balance to what I read in the newspaper.
That seems more rooted in reality.
Yes and I do like that these composers don’t go into the religious sphere or some form of theism, or into any kind of metaphysical sphere at all – everything stays deeply human, earthy and rooted, and thus very approachable. The subtext of them is: you don’t have to be a believer to come out of this darkness.
That’s exactly where they reminded me of Bach, which is perhaps odd…
It’s not odd!
Bach is associated with deep religiosity, but in St. Matthew Passion, for instance, the writing is blood-and-guts human, and it’s the embrace of that messiness which opens the door to the divine. The line between Bach and these modern works is not that long, is it?
It really isn’t It’s funny, I was standing in the Liszt Academy in Budapest recently – which is a total dream building, by the way – I was in a corridor and remembered being there one-and-a-half years ago, being tested with the orchestra, and at 5 in the afternoon the performance was cancelled; the entire bass section had covid. It was like a sudden rain-shower but you don’t know what to do; we are not programmed as artists to know what to do. When I get up on a performance day I am geared to that one thing in the evening when I am meant to deliver. It’s a lot of energy… this very earthy, a very sharply human experience…
How has that time influenced you in terms of singing both contemporary music like Widmann and Baroque?
In terms of the Widmann, it’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever learned, and if you don’t hear that I take it as a compliment. The scoring is very detailed! He is a total musician; he wants to define it as well as possible, but then you have to have it in your system. The actual level of preparation was intense; there is so much information coming your way, you can’t ignore it, and say, “Oh I feel it this way” – that isn’t possible. You have to prepare it to that level of detail and then know it subconsciously. It was an incredible amount of preparation, apart from pitching and rhythm, and the extended vocal techniques; he would write things in the direction like, ‘Dangerously Through Your Teeth’ or ‘Psychedelically Sung’ for certain passages, but it always makes sense. And, this may sound banal, but it could be Widmann or Monteverdi or Bach or Glanert, but look at it and I’ll think, “This is just top-class writing!”
Do you think preparing for something like the Widmann works would have been different in 2019?
I would say no …
So the pandemic didn’t change your approach that much… ?
It changed how people got together, via Zoom or not at all. The loneliness of preparation, overall, was strong for everything. Just after musicians here were allowed to come together again I did the Beethoven/Leonore with René Jacobs, it was just a piano rehearsal with the cast, and everybody started crying. It was such a release of… like, you can practice and vocalize, but it’s a profession which has to be done in community, and with a third ingredient in this: the public. The feeling of being together was unbelievable. For this experience we were grateful to have that return, to know we weren’t alone.
So yes, I stayed faithful to preparing well and being detailed, but, like the first time I sang the St. Matthew Passion, you come out of the pandemic experience a different person, obviously. It changes your whole perception of music and life. You can prepare the piece but the effect it leaves when you present it live… you cannot prepare for that.
One of the most moving episodes in the life of composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) occurred in 1960 upon his first visit to the health resort of Gohrisch, a mountainside town located forty kilometres south-east of Dresden, where he had gone to write the music for Lev Armshtam’s film “Five Days, Five Nights”. The String Quartet No. 8 was famously composed instead, the sole piece he wrote outside the Soviet Union, done over three days in mid-July in the green, scenic spot near the River Elbe. Tortured by questions of identity, integrity, history, creativity and the tenuous links therein, having been heavily coerced into joining the Communist Party just prior, Shostakovich dedicated the work to victims of fascism and war, offering a mourning of the past, a dirge for the present, a worried sigh at the future. The composer returned to Gohrisch in summer 1972 following the premiere of his Symphony No. 15, where he visited with conductor Kurt Sanderling. Little could he have known that the site would host a celebrated festival bearing his name, featuring a range of his own works as well as those by his colleagues and contemporaries.
The International Shostakovich Days Gohrisch, founded in 2010 with the help of the Staatskapelle Dresden, has been a fount of musical exploration in the decades since its titular composer paid his visits. This year’s edition, which opened on Thursday (30 June), features the music of Shostakovich, of course, as well as that of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931), Yuri Povolotsky (b. 1962), and Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937), who is this year’s recipient of the International Shostakovich Prize. It’s fair to say that there are several spectres hanging over this year’s edition of the festival, but they are encapsulated in the figure of one person who is no longer present, but whose history, with both Shostakovich and Gohrisch, remains vital. Conductor Michail Jurowski, who passed away in March of this year, helped in the formation of the Festival and indeed led the Sächsische Staatskapelle in the concert barn (or the concert marquee) in Gohrisch from 2010 to 2013, and was awarded the third International Shostakovich Prize by the Shostakovich Gohrisch Foundation in 2012. An award-winning album of live festival recordings, released in 2017 (Berlin Classics), features the music of Arvo Pärt (1935), Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996), and Shostakovich, including the 1948 song cycle, From Jewish Folk Poetry, op. 79, which was composed following Shostakovich’s denunciation of the Zhdanov Decree; it had to wait until 1955 to receive its premiere performance. Jurowski championed such repressed works, making it something of his life’s mission to uncover and present the pieces which an insidious combination of politics, history, nationalistic fervour, and ideological intransigence forced longtime silence, ignorance, misperception upon. Born in Moscow in 1945 but with Ukrainian roots, the conductor was a champion of bringing rarely heard (and even more rarely recorded) works to the fore, as much out of a sense of civic duty as artistic curiosity, something that stayed with him and was inherited by his children, pianist/vocal coach Maria; conductors Vladimir, and Dmitri. It is a family rich in artistic lineage as much as intellectual probing, as concerned with present exploration as much embracing the past, and looking to the future not with a worried sigh, but a defiant, direct stare.
This year’s festival is dedicated to the memory of Michail Jurowski, whose memory will be most poignantly marked on Sunday (3 July), when youngest son Dmitri Jurowski leads the Saxon State Orchestra Dresden in a programme of works by Silvestrov and Shostakovich, including the world premieres of Michail Jurowski’s arrangement of the latter composer’s The Human Comedy op.37 (1934) for concert orchestra, and Dmitri Jurowski’s arrangement of Six Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva opera.143a (1973) with soprano Evelina Dobračeva and chamber orchestra. The transposition of voice feels somehow very right for an artist like Dmitri Jurowski, a cellist with an innate feeling for vocal expression, both human and instrumental. Over the past two decades, he has led over one hundred different opera productions for a range of celebrated houses, including Bayerische Staatsoper, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opéra de Paris, Teatro Real Madrid, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Teatro La Fenice, Grand Théâtre Geneva, Lyric Opera Chicago, Israeli Opera Tel Aviv, and the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre. From 2011 to 2016 he was was General Music Director of the Flemish Opera Antwerp / Ghent. Jurowski’s history with opera does not obscure his deep sensitivity to (and with) orchestral scores – he has worked with the BBC Philharmonic Manchester, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra Stockholm, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Shanghai Philharmonic, to name a few. One of my own favourite recordings features the works of Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi (1877–1960) with Jurowski leading the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal (Cybele, 2018). With iron-hand-in-velvet-glove confidence, the conductor coaxes a luscious lyricism from the string section in Symphonic Minutes for orchestra op.36 (1933), a lyricism that is carried through into conversational woodwind exchange so lovingly conveyed in the piece’s second movement Rapsodia: Andante, and manifest in an energetic final Rondo: Presto, which is resplendent with busy strings and Jurowski’s repeated emphasis on cross-sectional conversation, allowing the drama which arises naturally from and within it to direct, turn a corner, then another; balance is thoughtfully maintained, but not at the expense of spirit; seriousness is equally present, but not without an equal dose of play.
Theatre, like music, would seem to be a part of the Jurowski family’s creative legacy, which, given the actual as well as artistic ties, only makes sense, given their long connection with many celebrated theatre artists, as well as Dmitri Shostakovich himself. The Human Comedy, composed for a 1934 stage adaptation of Balzac’s immense 19th century work by Russian writer Pavel Sukhotin (1884-1935), the mix of lightness and uncertainty of Balzac’s Paris, its surface charm hiding an anxious underbelly. The Six Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva possess their own form of drama, its power imparted via the fulsomeness of the poet’s vowels and consonants and the ways Shostakovich writes in, through, and around them. In listening to recordings, one is constantly confronted with the question of inner and outer ‘voices’, both vocal and instrumental, by experiences as much spoken as not; the third poem in the cycle (“Hamlet’s Dialogue With His Conscience”) with its ponderings on guilt, responsibility, notions of love and romance, and micro/macro ideas of place, speaks directly to the fourth (“The Poet And The Tsar”) and fifth (“No, The Drum Beat”) with its meditations on private-public faces and paradigms of power within various spheres of influence. The composer’s ever-present internal debates are reflected in this cycle, as much through the words of Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) as through its chewy score, which was recorded by contralto Ortrun Wenkel under the baton of Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouworkest, released by Decca in 1993. Placing the Six Poems cycle on the same bill as The Human Comedy, written four decades earlier, feels ballsy and somehow, important, particularly in light of ongoing debates related to the various uses and teachings of music, the role of canon, the expectations of audiences, whether music ought to have an “identity” (and if so, what it should be), as well as perceptions of Music As Entertainment (“Unterhaltsmusik”) and (or, more tiresomely, versus) Music As Serious Art (“ernste Musik”). Can Balzac and Tsvetaeva (and Silvestrov, and Shostakovich) share a creative universe? Well, why shouldn’t they? Moreover, how could they not?
The concert barn at the International Shostakovich Days Gohrisch, 2016. Photo: Oliver Killig
The lives and feelings these artists explored in their respective works, the words and sounds they choose for describing those lives and sharing inner thoughts, ask for the very quality Shostakovich himself seemed quite interested in (consciously or not), the thing which is in short supply as much in life as in art, especially at the moment: empathy. I am not a believer in music magically melting barriers; specific contexts (socio-economic, racial, religious) must be taken into account whenever one experiences new sounds – contexts as much as atmospheres, inner and outer, controllable and not. These things exist. Sounds don’t magically ping them away. The ways in which one experiences the work of Silvestrov and Shostakovich (and/or writers and poets) are as relevant as one possessing a background in either’s work, or both, or none. These things are as much related to context as the environment in which one experiences such works, environments filled with all manner of human comedy, tragedy, mediocrity, diversion, novelty, affliction, agenda, and (one hopes) opportunities for contemplation. Ugly circumstances, harsh realities, human life in all its variance, must be recognized. Lived realities, and the inevitable lines they (mostly unconsciously) create do not magically melt; they simply are. It’s up to you to acknowledge them. Thus is art’s role as a vehicle of empathy vital; If we are unwilling to do the actual, real work of feeling another’s experience (much less acknowledging it as real), particularly those who have not had the privilege we have enjoyed (and perhaps do not even recognize), if we do not conscientiously direct imagination toward those foreign experiences which are beyond our direct experience and knowledge (and thus may be unpleasant, unfamiliar, dull, wearying), then what use is theatre, art, music, culture? Leo Tolstoy grappled with this very question in What Is Art? (1897):
The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example; one man laughs, and another who hears becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man seeing him comes to a similar state of mind. By his movements or by the sounds of his voice, a man expresses courage and determination or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A man suffers, expressing his sufferings by groans and spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other people; a man expresses his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons, and phenomena. (trans. Aylmer Maude, 1899)
Painter Mark Rothko would later say that “The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.” While such strength and visibility of reaction is personal, and may or may not be warranted (in the age of social media reaction can be more performative than authentic), that doesn’t cancel its validity within a real, lived framework. Empathy is needed in times of strife – in times of war, in times of pandemic, in times of division, separation, hostility, horror, anger, intransigence; it is work, indeed. Empathy is the energetic opposite of whataboutism that so heavily (alas) dominates contemporary discourse, and it is the hardest thing to keep alive, let alone cultivate, when algorithms inspire (and profit from) strong reaction, not slow thought. Consider slow thought, the festival in Gohrisch seems to whisper; slow thought is, very possibly, the very thing that best cultivates empathy. Somehow I can hear Silvestrov, Shostakovich, Balzac, Tsvetaeva, and Michail Jurowski whispering such a suggestion a bit more loudly right now.
And so, amidst such consideration, and one hopes, a related cultivation of empathy within creative realms, is a conversation in which family, culture, creation, grief, poetry, and that sticky, marvellous word “transposition” are all carefully, slowly considered. It was a true privilege and pleasure to speak with Dmitri Jurowski, and to hear, over the course of nearly an hour, his observations and ideas on music, writing, sound, performance, and his father’s influence. I remain grateful for his time and energy.
Why did you choose the Tsvetaeva song cycle – why arrange it it for chamber orchestra?
This work of Dmitri Shostakovich was one of my father’s favourite compositions. The whole concert is dedicated to him – actually the concert, and the whole festival, which he had planned one year ago, was one he was supposed to conduct. So when everything happened of course we decided not to make any changes in the programme – the only thing we did was put in the Tsvetaeva cycle. That was not foreseen; originally it was a Shostakovich violin concerto with the bigger orchestra, but since the pandemic is still going on, the orchestra actually asked to have a work in the programme which is for chamber, not a big group. That was the first thing they asked, and the (the song cycle) was one of his favourite pieces. During his funeral his recording of it was played many times during the day – so we decided to do this. Also there was one little change (to the work itself). It was written for mezzo soprano, but we wanted to do this together with (soprano) Evelina Dobračeva; I know her, we studied together, she was working more with my father than with me, and during all these years they made many projects together. He was like a teacher for her, and it was very important to have her on board for this project, so the only thing we had to do was change the tonalities for the cycle, because for a soprano it’s really too low. That was the only thing we did. The programme’s second half, The Human Comedy, will be a very special thing; it’s a world premiere. The work has been performed in the past of course, but it’ll be the first time the whole music, music for theatre, is done, the way it was played in Moscow in the theatre of Vakhtangov in 1934. That was the only year it was performed in the theatre, so that’s why we had to go and find it all; it was a real adventure to find that material. I spent a lot of time in different archives in Moscow, in the Vakhtangov Theatre, searching for it – I have good friend who is an actor who helped me, and it was a real thrill to find all the notes of the director from that time, his writing on when exactly which part of music was supposed to be played. Luckily they were very bureaucratic in the 1930s, so I could find everything I needed, but it’s still interesting. I’m really thrilled – again, yes, it will be the first time it’s performed.
The Human Comedy has been dismissed in the past as something Shostakovich simply did for the money, but having it in a chamber arrangement also means it forces a reconsideration…
You’re right, it’s becomes very transparent because of that. As to my opinion on its inception, the same thing you can say about Mozart: a lot of music and composers wrote for money. It was normal, they did it for a living, but even what Shostakovich did for the money was great. I think he had a lot of humour, sometimes very black humour, cynical humour, so even with the music he was writing for entertainment, it still becomes, somehow, very biting. And it’s interesting that the problems in the society they were facing in the 1920s and 1930s, I have the feeling many of these things we are facing again. Shostakovich was saying the music, there is actually a great quote of his, that music is the only thing which should survive any wars and any illnesses. I have the feeling now in the beginning of the 21st century we are back in the same situation somehow. We have to somehow prove that art, that music, has the power and the possibility to survive and bring, a little bit, people back together, that’s actually the only thing you can do in this really difficult situation.
Conductor Michail Jurowski leads the Staatskapelle Dresden and cellist Isang Enders at the inaugural International Shostakovich Days Gohrisch in 2010. Photo: Matthias Creutziger
The context in which it is presented is important, your father’s history with the festival being very much part of that context. I’m curious what you think attracted him to this work. I recall him telling me years ago that conducting in America was like a dream for him – something that really wouldn’t be expressed now – and I can only theorize that such an experience, and the related feelings of curiosity and wonder, play into Balzac’s explorations about the variance of human experience, and Shostakovich’s also.
Yes, I’m thinking a lot in the last few months about his relationship to Shostakovich as well. It’s a strange thing, my father had such a close relationship to (the composer) in a human sense, as well as professionally. It was such that I always had the feeling I knew Shostakovich myself, even though it’s not possible. We spoke a lot about Shostakovich from my childhood and now since my father is no longer here I think about this energy he was creating, because you are right, I feel strongly his presence is still here. Even though I’m not able to ask him in real life for advice, I feel it, and it has been like that before when I was in touch with the music of Shostakovich – I was doing a lot of his music throughout my life and always feel an energetic support from him myself, although I didn’t know him. My father would speak about a genetic memory, and I think it’s valuable; he himself had strong genetic memory because of his father and grandfather. The period of The Human Comedy, or when we speak about Balzac and the 19th century, or the first thirty years of 20th century when this piece was written for theatre, those are all periods my father couldn’t know himself, but still a very strong connection existed. And I have the feeling it’s not an accident that history sometimes makes these repetitions – that is also a little bit related to this Human Comedy, to this exchange of tragedy and comedy, this continuance; it never stops.
So the idea of Shostakovich, as with other artists, is that there is no end of the story – there might be the end of somebody’s life, but the whole story will continue with other characters, like a play. So when you feel part of the huge theatrical play, that’s also what people like Shakespeare imagined, then you… have to also create a distance to everything, which is not bad, especially in our days, because it is very difficult to continue and to go on when you are facing really very strong negative things, like war, like illness –so you need a distance to all that.
But you also need immediacy, a sense of relationship to what you watch, what you listen to, the people you spend time with, the food you eat, whatever you consume in whatever forms, and I feel Shostakovich really understood that – your father understood that also. That sense of connection is powerfully manifest in chamber arrangements. How, to your mind, does changing the tonality for voice, and within a chamber configuration, affect understandings of Tsvetaeva’s poetry, and Shostakovich’s music?
The word “transposition” is a great word; it has so much inside of it! I am always curious why we call it, in musical language, a transposition from one tonality or modulation to another one – of course it will be another piece, so I am very curious how this particular piece will sound. Every tonality has a colour; every tonality has a character, so when you change tonalities you change a lot of things – that’s clear. But we have to take into account that every piece of music we hear, from Baroque times or from Classical times, that all the tonalities – all the G Minors and whatnot – from that period are not the same as now because of the tuning, so when you start to play this music in the way it was done at the time it was written, then you understand it’s really another feeling. But it doesn’t mean you have to do that – you can play it also in the modern tonalities, with modern instruments. The times are changing and the acoustics are changing. What I can say about the Tsvetaeva work is, I have a feeling for now anyway, that the music itself remains dark, the cycles of Shostakovich remain dark, even if we put everything one tone higher, but the transference of the text now means it might be even stronger because of that. When you take the very high voices with the very high notes you can barely understand them.
For example, I’m talking now a little bit lower, because there is also microphone so I don’t have to raise my voice so much, but if I’m talking to somebody, the minute I speak a little bit higher, the attention, the whole energy, changes – it’s like a string pulled tighter, the whole connection is stronger, right at this moment. It’s not better or worse, it’s just a different kind of energy, so I’m really curious how (the song cycle) will be, but it’s my feeling that the darkness becomes more transparent there. Also the number of musicians onstage is really not big, you can do it with a bigger group, but for me, I’m not a pianist, I’m a cellist – I was doing a lot of chamber music and a lot of soloistic music, especially, so it’s a different feeling. My best memories were the cycles of Shostakovich with the Blok poetry which is written for piano trio and voice, and there were movements where you had just cello and voice together, and this type of intimacy where you have this one voice and one instrument, for me is something I always try to aim for even when I have a big symphony to perform. I’m always searching for these intimate moments when you can really produce this kind of tension. It’s like when you have a crowd of people and everyone is talking and then suddenly everyone is silent and you have two people looking at each and talking to each other – that’s powerful. This silence is extremely strong. And for somebody like Tsvetaeva, her work really asks for silence, even if she’s screaming or crying, it’s not for mainstream television, let’s say.
Some translations capture that relationship between silence and music better than others; the repetitions in her writing are staccato in some ways – so deliberate, so rhythmic, so musical.
They really are…
I wonder if people miss that musicality because of the drama, but she’s asking as much for a subconscious understanding through that musicality as a conscious one through the words themselves, and I think Shostakovich captures both in this song cycle…
Yes that’s true!
.. now I wanted to ask you, these chamber sounds, vocal sounds, ensemble sounds – the ways you perceive sound, and write, conduct, and transpose, are they informed by the cello?
Yes, you’re right; they are. I have to say, my biggest learning, one of my best schooling in working with singers was by playing cello, because it is the instrument which has the biggest connection to the human voice. It includes the whole range of all possible sounds, from bass to soprano, in one instrument. I remember I had an ensemble, a chamber group, we performed with a baritone, me as a cellist, and a pianist, we were doing many arrangements, not only opera arias but we were also playing, lots of duets for example, of Schumann and Schubert, where one voice was played by cello and one was singing, and there was always a moment where you consciously lost this – like “where is the voice and where is the cello?” This is also what Shostakovich really did great, his understanding of sounds, of the voice as an instrument, was really central. So when vocalists deal with Shostakovich, they have to really think like an instrument, especially for performing his music, it’s a great need. Of course it helps when you have, generally, great poetry. In Italian opera you sometimes have a kind of text which is, I don’t want to say it’s useless, but of course you have it sometimes where the words are really not important but the vocal line is, and that’s something else – but when you deal with Russian or German or also sometimes Italian, but another type of style, like something from Petrarch or Dante, something where the text is leading, it’s obvious how the music has to be.
That’s why it’s so great with Shostakovich: the music has to be leading and carrying at the same time. And especially when you see the amazing last movement of the cycle, when it’s about Akhmatova, so Tsvetaeva is writing about Akhmatova, through Shostakovich’s musical line, it’s just… you have so many incredible people in one little musical bar… it’s immense. For a conductor, a musician, a listener, it doesn’t matter – you have to show it to others, you don’t have to show yourself, you don’t have to pretend your art is higher or mightier than anything those people were creating. It’s not about you. That’s why it’s so important to be a little bit aside, and to be a little bit under this, let’s say, sound, still controlling everything, still producing your language, and with your capacities, but! This is too fragile, all this music and chamber music generally is very fragile, and in combination with poetry of Tsvetaeva and music of Shostakovich, you can’t just throw it somewhere; you have to touch it as if it’s crystal. That’s the best possibility, for everyone … to hear, to listen, to inhale it. That’s why I am always looking forward, so much, to all these sorts of concerts, but energetically they take… it’s a much bigger challenge than a huge symphony or opera. It’s sometimes much more difficult to produce something like that.
Your use of the word “fragility” brings Silvestrov’s work to mind. He is on the programme with Shostakovich on Sunday. How do you see the connection?
The interesting thing is I performed Silvestrov in my time as a cellist many years ago. His work is always very much related to beauty, and it’s very honest music; he was never trying to pretend that he was the big modernist of the 20th century. Somebody like Arvo Pärt is also not a modernist but is very much about the spirit of music. I know Pärt very well, we spoke a lot about music, and you can feel how important the spiritual energy has always been for him in his life, and not only in his music – but with Silvestrov, it’s different; it’s so simple with him. Of course now the situation has changed. He’s not the only existing Ukrainian composer but he’s the big one being performed. He’s the oldest, for sure – luckily it’s still alive, and he will be present on Sunday. For musicians performing his music now, you can imagine it’s even more a responsibility now than it was twenty years ago, and still, I am absolutely sure it is so important for him as a composer, and for us as interpreters, to play music, to make music, to show the artistic side of Silvestrov. Shostakovich was much more political than Silvestrov, of course, they were much different times in which Shostakovich lived. But he was somebody who was a fighter; he was always fighting crises. Somehow, luckily for him, he didn’t need to invent anything; it was already present in reality. Shostakovich generally works very well in combination with other composers of the Soviet Union of the 20th century, but with a little bit different way of energy.
It’s interesting that Silvestrov is being honoured at the festival this year, and that his work is on this programme with the Shostakovich chamber arrangements.
Especially the Tsvetaeva work, which comes directly after the Silvestrov piece. His work is chamber music, and it’s about feeling, about atmosphere. With Shostakovich there is a script, always, there is a clear storyline, even if it’s not… even if you play Shostakovich’s chamber music without words, still, yes, he is the narrator of the story. Silvestrov, it was always my feeling, he’s a witness of atmosphere, and he’s sharing that atmosphere. So that’s why I think there is a good link between them.
He’s an observer of atmosphere and putting it out there has its own kind of interpretation of script…
Yes.
… it’s one that is being written as it’s being played, and it changes all the time. That’s what I hear in Silvestrov, not a narrative but a sort of Beckett play where there’s a very pervasive mood that is inherent to overall understanding. I wonder if that’s another connection with the work of Shostakovich, that development of feeling with inner and outer worlds.
That’s about performing, though. Performing must include a script – whatever you are doing, it must have a certain sense. Sometimes you have a kind of clear help from the composer who is writing everything already, so you have just to comment; in other cases you have to create a script for yourself, and with the music of Silvestrov it’s not difficult. Especially in the 21st century – and the 20th they had it as well – you have movies, when you know how a movie can work, and you know what the perfect music is for it. That’s essentially what Shostakovich said about Silvestrov – they knew each other of course. Silvestrov is 84 years old now, he knew Shostakovich, who was always very polite to his colleagues, and had a lot of respect for people like Schnittke and Kancheli. I remember hearing from the widow of Shostakovich, from Irina, I spoke to her two weeks ago about this concert, and she said, “Yes, he always respected Silvestrov, he said (Silvestrov’s) music is amazing especially when somebody knows how to paint.” So somehow it’s an interesting way to describe his music.
So if Shostakovich is Kandinsky, Silvestrov is Mark Rothko?
Good point, yes.
Experiencing all these “paintings” in a live setting on Sunday, one which is so historically loaded, and especially with you doing it, feels profound, though it must be a little daunting for you?
What do you mean?
Parental figures who give their children deep connections to art can cast large shadows, as my own mother did; after she passed and I had to go do things in public with some kind of connection to her, it was like walking into a room naked; I learned that one has to draw a line between what one gives the public and saves for one’s self.
Well, you know Catherine, when I chose this profession and started to conduct, having my father and my brother, these important and successful conductors already, I knew I would be kind of naked my entire life. So that’s nothing new to me. I’ve done this job for seventeen years now. The only thing which is kind of changing for myself, not for other people, is that I feel my… responsibility, first of all, for this profession since he passed away, is now bigger than it was before. Because now I have not only to be just to be on a certain professional level, we all have to achieve this for all our lives, but I have also to respect and show respect to his memory, you know? And respect to memory, responsibility for somebody who is not there anymore, physically at least, for me it’s now an experience to say that somehow it’s even bigger, but it gives you more energy.
I remember the day he passed away, on the 19th of March, this day I was in my theatre in Novosibirsk and the next day I had Traviata to conduct, not the easiest opera to do, especially… but the thing is… whatever piece I would conduct, whatever I would take, my father had such a huge repertoire and had done so many things in his life, so there is always a kind of link to him. And I have to be honest, I didn’t have so much energy to go onstage of course at that time, but I did it, because I knew he would really appreciate it at this precise moment. And I mean I always have, it’s one of the main reasons I do this profession, is that I have very special feelings for singers – that’s the most fragile and most sensitive thing because you have an instrument here, inside. I always trying to treat the singers with a necessary sensitivity, but now I have the feeling it’s even more, because I know they have to produce out their emotions they have inside, you know? So this experience is something, and it’s the thing that will stay with me forever. I know of course there is always a period of grief you have to go through and some of your parents or the people close to you die, and somehow it’s over, you’re over this hill, and you still have the memories but there’s a distance…
… I can tell you the grief comes back, but in a different form.
Yes, I have the feeling when we talk about him, it will never be completely distant to me. We are doing the same profession and my life and profession are the same thing. There will be, always, a strong connection, and probably through the years, it will become even stronger.
Top: Dmitri Jurowski leads a rehearsal with the Staatskapelle at the Semper Opera. Photo: Matthias Creutziger
“A Distinct Musical Language”
