Simon Keenlyside Malcolm Martineau Songs by Schubert, Wolf Fauré and Ravel Simon Keenlyside baritone Franz Schubert Malcolm Martineau piano 01 An Silvia 02.47 16 Notre amour 01.58 02 Einsiedelei 01.33 17 Fleur jetée 01.35 03 Verklärung 03.36 18 Spleen 02.29 Recorded live at Wigmore Hall, London 04 Die Sterne 03.35 26 October 2008 19 Madrigal 01.32 05 Himmelsfunken 03.03 20 Le papillon et la fleur 02.49 06 Ständchen 04.25 Maurice Ravel hugo WolF Histoires naturelles 18.51 07 Der Knabe und das Immelein 02.56 21 Le paon 04.44 08 Gesang Weyla's 01.37 22 Le grillon 03.19 09 An die Geliebte 03.20 23 Le cygnet 03.28 10 Auf eine Christblume II 02.12 24 Le martin-pêcheur 03.02 11 Lied eines Verliebten 01.44 25 La pintade 04.01 12 Lied vom Winde 03.10 encore gabriel Fauré FranciS Poulenc 13 Aubade 02.10 26 announcement 00.10 14 En sourdine 03.09 27 Hôtel 02.25 15 Green 01.58 Total time: 74.08 DDD WHLive0031 C 2009 The Wigmore Hall Trust P 2009 The Wigmore Hall Trust Made & Printed in England All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibited. LC 14458 Wigmore Hall 36 Wigmore Street London W1U 2BP www.wigmore-hall.org.uk John Gilhooly Director The Wigmore Hall Trust Reg. Charity No. 1024838 SIMON KEENLYSIDE AT WIGMORE HALL creating a lunar beauty in the last stanza. Down to Hades in ‘Gruppe aus dem Tartarus’ – and Simon Keenlyside’s deep fascination and Martineau’s chromatic ascent had the audience natural instinct for languages both human gasping with the voices of the tormented. Their and avian is an essential part of his creative doleful weeping, deep in Keenlyside’s baritone, personality – whether he is immersing seems to have given Elgar an idea or two for his himself in the study of European literature or, dispossessed demons in Gerontius. famously, imitating a vast repertoire of birdsong, a In turning to Wolf’s Morike Lieder, language of nature particularly close to Keenlyside and Martineau celebrate one of the his heart as ornithologist and zoologist. greatest meetings of creative minds in the history Sometimes the two meet – as in this recital, in which a of song. Hugo Wolf first discovered the poetry of capacity Wigmore Hall audience was treated to an Eduard Morike in the 1870s. Both writer and irresistible set of Histoires naturelles, as well as musician shared an elusive inner imagination, German-language cameos in which the song of the fired by intense mood-swings: Wolf’s notes seem nightingale was never far away. to bring out the inner music in Morike’s verse, just The audience was fully in the power as Morike’s poetry kindled in Wolf the creative heat of Keenlyside and Martineau as soon as they to form a new musical language. This heat all but began their cornucopia of Schubert boiled over in 1888, when Wolf wrote no fewer than songs, which included the ever-popular 53 settings of Morike. ‘Ständchen’ and the Shakespearean serenade, ‘An The Wolf group opened with a mock-naif Sylvia’. Keenlyside created an artfully performance of a cautionary tale about a boy and choreographed spiritual journey, starting with a vocal a bee, (‘Der Knabe und das Immlein’). The ‘Gesang watercolour of a hermitage, in ‘Die Einsiedelei’. Weylas’, which Wolf later orchestrated, is a cameo The hermit’s desire for transfiguration and of a magical kingdom, glimpsed in both verbal and transcendence is the subject of ‘Verklarung’, musical sonorities. This was followed by an audibly the German poet Herder’s translation of appreciated and tenderly serene ‘An die Geliebte’. Alexander Pope’s original. Martineau brings apt When Morike discovered a Hellebore, or Christmas grandiloquence to Keenly side’s declamatory Rose, growing in a church yard, he wrote a pair of opening in this dramatic scena of the soul. A poems to celebrate his sense of wonder: this is similar longing for spiritual sublimation is voiced delightfully realised in Wolf’s second setting, and through the soul of the Sun itself, in ‘Freiwilliges here in the hushed half-voice of Keenlyside. Versinken’, the voluntary descent watched, and Keenlyside chose ‘Aubade’ as the envied, by Schubert’s depressive flat-mate, opening song of his Fauré group, finding an the poet Mayrhofer. Listen to the way in which enraptured head voice for the final lines of each Keenlyside drains all colour from his voice, 3 stanza. This is followed by two settings of Paul Maurice Ravel’s settings of the satirical Verlaine from Fauré’s Cinq mélodies de Venise – these prose vignettes of four birds and one insect, by the were written while the composer was a guest at a pacifist writer, Jules Renard, certainly caused feathers canalside houseparty hosted by the Princesse de to fly at their first performance. Fauré was one of many Polignac. Keenlyside masks his baritone as though who disapproved of the naturalistic word-setting, a withdrawing into himself and into the heart of the far cry from the artifice of themélodie ; and Debussy beloved in the muted ‘En Sourdine’, and finds the thought them mere conjuring tricks. But the Histoires rising sap in his voice for ‘Green’. naturelles of 1906 are Ravel’s greatest and most Armand Silvestre, set by Fauré in the next original contribution to the song repertoire. two songs, was a civil servant whose fashionable As Martineau so graphically reveals, it is verse appealed to composers simply because it left the piano preludes and postludes that distill the plenty of scope for musical elaboration. essence of each song, and act as little emblems of Keenlyside and Martineau capture the elusive the creature depicted. There is a pompous mock movement of ‘Notre amour’ – in their hands, French overture for the proud a true chose legere; and they find the spectre peacock (listen for the whoosh of the tail of Schubert’s Erlkönig in the angry, drumming feathers opening, in the contrary-motion power of the wind which withers the ‘Fleur jetee’. glissando at the end!). For the cricket, there are More quintessential Verlaine in one of Fauré’s delicately oscillating semi quavers, matched by greatest and darkest songs, ‘Spleen’ – a formidable Keenlyside’s whispered syllables; and, for the swan, rival to Debussy’s ‘Il pleure dans mon coeur’. The a sideways glance at Saint-Saëns. Magically singer has to find reserves of sustained energy suspended chords em body the precisely to express the lack of it, in an ennui whose kingfisher’s light perch on a fishing-rod: inner passion both Fauré and Keenlyside reveal Keenlyside responds with a remarkable most eloquently. steadi ness of line, and virtuoso breath control which After the serenading ‘Madrigal de Shylock’, recreates a sense of breathless wonder. In the live Keenlyside ended his Fauré group with the composer’s recital, Keenlyside’s voice and stage presence kept very first composition: ‘Le Papillon et la fleur’, written its cool, providing an intensity of droll wonderment in the dining room of his boarding school, at the age which is at the very heart of Ravel. of sixteen. Martineau provides the dizzy wingbeat After these compelling performances, the of this salon waltz, and Keenlyside adopts a stylish audience roared for encores – and so finally, conversational mode. It’s all in the voice: live at the what Martineau hailed as ‘the laziest song ever Wigmore, he saw no need to sell the song physically, written’: Poulenc’s ‘Hotel’, in a wonderfully as many more coy performers are so often tempted understated performance. to do. Notes by Hilary Finch © 2009 4 FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) An Silvia D. 891 (1826) To Sylvia Was ist Silvia, saget an, What is Sylvia, tell me, Daß sie die weite Flur preist? that the wide fields praise her? Schön und zart seh’ ich sie nah’n, I see her draw near, delicate and fair, Auf Himmels Gunst und Spur weist, it is a mark of heaven’s favour Daß ihr Alles untertan. that all are subject to her. Ist sie schön und gut dazu? Is she fair and kind as well? Reiz labt wie milde Kindheit; Her gentle child-like charm refreshes; Ihrem Aug’ eilt Amor zu, Cupid hastens to her eyes, Dort heilt er seine Blindheit, is cured of blindness there, Und verweilt in süßer Ruh. and lingers in sweet peace. Darum Silvia, tön’, o Sang, To Sylvia, then, let our song resound, Der holden Silvia Ehren; in sweetest Sylvia’s honour; Jeden Reiz besiegt sie lang, she’s long excelled every grace Den Erde kann gewähren: that this earth can bestow: Kränze ihr und Saitenklang! bring her garlands and the sound of strings! (William Shakespeare 1564–1616, translated by Edward von Bauernfeld 1802–1890) Die Einsiedelei D. 393 (1816) The hermitage Es rieselt, klar und wehend, In the oak wood flows a stream, Ein Quell im Eichenwald; clean and rippling. Da wähl’ich, einsam gehend, Wandering alone, I choose there Mir meinen Aufenthalt. my resting place. Mir dienet zur Kapelle A grotto, cool and fragrant, Ein Gröttchen, duftig, frisch; serves as my chapel; Zu meiner Klausnerzelle entwined bushes Verschlungenes Gebüsch. are my hermit’s cell. Wie sich das Herz erweitert How the heart is elated Im engen, dichten Wald! in the thick, dense forest! Dem öden Trübsinn heitert Gloomy melancholy is soon cheered Der traute Schatten bald. by its friendly shade. Kein überleg’ner Späher Here no disdainful eye Erforscht hier meine Spur; spies on my steps; Ich bin hier frei und näher here I am free, and closer Der Einfalt und Natur.