Lise Davidsen
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LISE DAVIDSEN Philharmonia Orchestra • Esa-Pekka Salonen RICHARD WAGNER 1813–1883 VIER LETZTE LIEDER Four Last Songs · Quatre Derniers Lieder TA N N H ÄU S E R 0 Frühling 3.45 1 Dich, teure Halle Act II, Scene 1 3.41 ! September 5.38 2 Allmächt’ge Jungfrau ! Act III, Scene 1 7.33 @ Beim Schlafengehen 5.39 £ Im Abendrot 8.59 RICHARD STRAUSS 1864–1949 ARIADNE AUF NAXOS 3 Es gibt ein Reich 6.36 LISE DAVIDSEN soprano VIER LIEDER op.27 Four Songs · Quatre Lieder PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA ESA-PEKKA SALONEN 4 Ruhe, meine Seele! 4.36 7, @ 5 Cäcilie 2.20 Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay solo violin Nigel Black solo horn ! 6 Heimliche Aufforderung orch. Robert Heger 3.29 7 Morgen! 4.34 8 WIEGENLIED op.41 no.1 4.12 9 M ALVEN TrV 297 orch. Wolfgang Rihm 3.02 2 ENDINGS INTO BEGINNINGS y 1946, Germany’s most celebrated The year before, Strauss had read living composer had witnessed the Joseph von Eichendorff’s poem Im B destruction of his country from Abendrot, which tells of an old couple within. Nearly every concert hall and watching the ascent of two larks and the opera house associated with Richard descent of the sun in counterpoint. After Strauss lay in ruins after the Second World this clear metaphor, the poem asks ‘is that War. Having believed he could turn the perhaps death?’ Strauss set the poem in tide of Nazism’s cultural havoc using his 1948, but with a telling alteration. His last own influence, Strauss had found himself line ends ‘is this perhaps death?’ (‘ist dies on the wrong side domestically as well as etwa der Tod?’). Underneath, the orchestra internationally. With his wife Pauline, he plays the ‘transfiguration’ theme from an retreated to Switzerland. orchestral work he wrote five decades It was the British who threw Strauss earlier, Death and Transfiguration. a lifeline. In 1947, Sir Thomas Beecham Between July and September 1948, organised a festival of the composer’s Strauss wrote three more songs, settings music in London during which Strauss of poems by Hermann Hesse infused conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra with similar contemplations of mortality. at the Royal Albert Hall. He landed at Together with Malven, a personal gift Northolt on 4 October and was driven to the soprano Maria Jeritza, the four straight to The Savoy, where a journalist would become Strauss’s last vocal asked him what he had planned for works. He died on 8 September 1949 the future. ‘To die, of course,’ Strauss without having heard them performed. replied. Eight months later, that privilege fell 3 to a British audience listening to a messenger. Strauss tells us how he feels The wedding had taken place in contradictions that kept the composer so Norwegian soprano accompanied by the and invites the audience to respond.’ September 1894, a few weeks after fixated on his wife. In the visionary aria Philharmonia Orchestra. On 22 May 1950, Malven is Strauss’s last song by Strauss conducted Wagner’s Tannhäuser ‘Es gibt ein Reich’, Strauss invokes a grand Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted Kirsten definition and is imbued with similar at Bayreuth in which Pauline sang solitude but lines it with sadness and irony. Flagstad in Strauss’s Four Orchestral resignation and breadth, even pausing for Elisabeth. Davidsen sings the same role in Where Wagner’s Elisabeth walks to her Songs, back at the Royal Albert Hall. an extended non-vocal interlude like its the summer of 2019 (her Bayreuth debut), death lost and destroyed, Ariadne seizes Before the works were published, companions. Betty Wehrli-Knobel’s words portraying this woman of dignity and upon the liberating opportunities of the Strauss’s editor Ernest Roth replaced the describe mallow flowers, prompting a strength, fuelled by love but destroyed by afterlife, vaulting through the aria’s final word ‘Orchestral’ with ‘Last’. sweeter sort of lyricism from Strauss that is infidelity. In the opera, Elisabeth arrives phrases as if reborn. Davidsen made her The ember-like glow that pervades taken somewhere else again by Wolfgang on stage radiantly optimistic, soaring UK debut in the role at Glyndebourne in Strauss’s songs is a quality ever-present Rihm’s orchestration from 2012 (the through ‘Dich, teure Halle’ in anticipation 2017. The magnificence and delicacy she in the voice of Lise Davidsen. ‘A lot of song was discovered in 1984). ‘We were of her lost love’s return. By the time of her brought to it immediately alerted the wider Strauss is made for a voice like mine’, all drawn together as we tried to define Act III prayer ‘Allmächt’ge Jungfrau’, she is opera world to a distinctive and thrilling the soprano says. That voice has great the sound we wanted’, says Davidsen of reliving the nightmare of his absence, this new voice. presence and a particular warmth recording Malven; ‘for this one, there was time sensing its permanence. traversing extremes of range and volume. no existing picture.’ ‘This is the beginning and the end for Andrew Mellor Its consistency has led to comparison with Strauss’s love for his wife seeps Elisabeth: the first and last things she Flagstad – a dramatic soprano raised, like from every bar of the Four Last Songs, sings’, says Davidsen, who approaches Davidsen, in rural Norway. but Pauline had long been present in his the first aria with more strident control On this journey from Wagner into music. The composer wrote his Op.27 set than wide-eyed naivety. ‘I think she is in Strauss’s late songs with the Philharmonia as a wedding gift for her, later orchestrating control. Her love is real, even if it looks like and Esa-Pekka Salonen, Davidsen combines ‘Ruhe, meine Seele!’ as he contemplated a fixation. That makes the trajectory even rare sensitivity with plain-speaking Nordic death in ‘Im Abendrot’ (some believe he more devastating: from this joyous start to fearlessness. ‘It’s my mission to approach intended it as part of the Eichendorff/Hesse a total loss of hope. Boom. Reality.’ the songs with clarity, an attitude of “this is set). That song’s luminous companions Strauss wrote a handful of operatic what it is”’, says Davidsen, who wrote her formed the preface to a marriage that leads for Pauline, but even more were thesis on Strauss songs while studying at would span more than five decades. modelled on her. He started work on the Royal Danish Academy of Music. ‘Yes, I Strauss described ‘Wiegenlied’, an erotic Ariadne auf Naxos five years after think of being at peace, of moving from one song on the consummation of love in the her retirement, but the title role, sung state into another without fear. But it’s not guise of a lullaby, as ‘changeable, like the first by Jeritza, is filled with the sort of my responsibility to interpret. I am just the favours of a woman’. 4 d’exécution. Huit mois plus tard, c’est un public royale danoise de musique. « Oui, j’imagine britannique qui eut ce privilège, par le biais une grande quiétude, le passage sans crainte DES FINS POUR DES DÉBUTS d’une soprano norvégienne accompagnée d’un état à un autre. Mais ce n’est pas à moi de l’Orchestre Philharmonia. Le 22 mai d’interpréter, je ne suis qu’une messagère. 1950, Wilhelm Furtwängler dirigeait Kirsten Strauss exprime ce qu’il éprouve et invite ses Flagstad dans les Quatre Lieder orchestraux, auditeurs à réagir. » cette fois encore au Royal Albert Hall. Avant Malven est effectivement le dernier lied la publication des pièces, Ernst Roth, l’éditeur de Strauss et il présente la même résignation uand vint l’année 1946, le L’année précédente, le compositeur avait de Strauss, remplaça le mot « orchestraux » et la même amplitude que les Quatre Derniers compositeur vivant le plus célébré lu le poème de Joseph von Eichendorff par « derniers ». Lieder, allant jusqu’à s’autoriser comme eux Qd’Allemagne avait assisté de Im Abendrot, dans lequel un vieux couple Le rougeoiement ambré qui nimbe les un interlude purement instrumental. Le texte l’intérieur à la destruction de son pays. Au contemple l’envol de deux alouettes dans lieder de Strauss est indissociable du timbre de Betty Wehrli-Knobel décrit des mauves, sortir de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, presque la lumière du soleil couchant. Après cette de Lise Davidsen : « De nombreuses pages de fleurs qui inspirent à Strauss un lyrisme toutes les salles de concert et les théâtres métaphore, le poème pose la question : Strauss sont faites pour une voix comme la plus tendre, mené dans une autre direction lyriques associés à Richard Strauss n’étaient « Cela serait-il la mort ? » Strauss mit le texte mienne », déclare la soprano. Cet instrument par l’orchestration réalisée en 2012 par plus que ruines. Ayant cru que son influence en musique en 1948, mais en y apportant à la présence intense et à la chaleur Wolfgang Rihm (ce lied a été redécouvert pourrait entraver les ravages culturels de une modification significative ; son dernier distinctive couvre une ample tessiture et en 1984). « Nous nous recueillions ensemble la marée nazie, Strauss s’était retrouvé du vers s’achève par : « Ceci serait-il la mort ? » des dynamiques extrêmes. C’est en raison pour essayer de définir le son que nous mauvais côté de la barrière, tant sur le plan (« ist dies etwa der Tod ? ») Sous la ligne de ce grain particulier qu’on a comparé Lise recherchions », raconte Davidsen au sujet de national qu’international, et accompagné de vocale, l’orchestre joue le « thème de la Davidsen à Kirsten Flagstad, une soprano l’enregistrement de Malven.