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Recital
May 18, 2002
Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow
..
Simon Keenlyside
Caroline Dowdle (piano)
Programme
Schubert :
Verklärung, D59
An Silvia, D889
Freiwilliges Versinken, D700
Der Tod und das Mädchen, D531
Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, D583
Wandrers Nachtlied II D 748
Waldesnacht (Im Walde), D708
Furcht der Geliebten- An Cidli, D285b
Dem Unendlichen, D291b
Himmelsfunken, D651
Ständchen (from Schwanengesang, D957)
Interval
Brahms :
Auf dem Kirchhofe (Nr. 4 from 5 songs op. 105)
Vor dem Fenster (Nr. 1 from 8 songs and romances op. 14)
Die Mainacht (Nr. 2 from 4 songs op. 43)
Ständchen (Nr. 1 from 5 Songs op. 106)
Fauré :
Mandoline (from Mélodies de Venise)
En sourdine (from Mélodies de Venise)
Green (from Mélodies de Venise)
Notre amour
Le secret
Le papillon et la fleur
Sérénade Toscane – in Italian
Encore
Poulenc :
Hôtel
Caroline Dowdle
What the critics say
From “Bolshoi Theatre”, by A. Bulytcheva. Translated from Russian by Irina.
Serenades on a May evening
The cycle “Chamber evenings in the Bolshoi Theatre” finished, as it began, with a world class performance: the English baritone Simon Keenlyside performed in the last evening.
He doesn’t belong to the number of highly promoted super-stars whose photos constantly decorate magazines’ covers. His career is forming more modestly and tastefully: now he sings in all the best theatres of the world and records with the leading conductors of the world.
Instead of a collection of separate songs, the guest created in Beethoven’s hall of the Bolshoi Theatre a complete performance based on contrasts and surprises. The first part – Schubert’s and partly Brahms’ songs – was thorough and serious. Then the singer changed his German seriousness to French lightness. Seven Fauré romances sounded carefully, with frivolity and elegance. Every block of unknown songs concluded with a hit, for example, a serenade.
Pianist Caroline Dowdle was not as irreproachable as the singer, her playing had a lack of fluency. But she had one important value – she was able to listen to her partner and to imitate him in style, intonation and form (observation of phrasing). And that is most valuable in ensemble with Simon Keenlyside – the musician who has the property to amaze the public with masterfully changing styles and the trying on of different roles.
From “Cultura” (“The culture”), by L. Dolgacheva. Translated by Irina
The theatre of one Keenlyside.
Because of agitation his hand stretched periodically to correct something in his suit, the movements were jerky. As if to make his presence on the stage unbearable, somebody in the Bolshoi’s heart began to strike iron, and the poor man had to sing the first song not so much as a piano duet as to the accompaniment of the drainage pipes.
In one respect it was clear that we had dealings with a keen nervous nature, who knows chamber music well and is especially able to transfer its moods with remarkable sharpness. But in another respect such a person, if he cannot overcome his nerves, is able to make a meeting with music rather agonizing. An English singer, Simon Keenlyside who closed the first season of the cycle “Chamber evenings in the Bolshoi Theatre”, showed both respects.
Schubert, sung in the first part of the evening, was not successful in full measure. It was difficult to say why it happened so. Maybe Mr. Keenlyside did not cope with his nerves or maybe he tried too much to follow the German tradition of Schubert’s performing – singing using “sound without support”. But his un-German nature resisted with all its might: the complete sound showed a voice of rare beauty but then mixed it with “sound without support”, so that an excessive diversity of timbres and some inexact notes were the consequence of this manner of performing.
But in the second part the public was rewarded in full. Getting rid of his agitation (or of tradition’s oppression) Keenlyside (performing Brahms’ and Fauré’s songs) trilled away like a nightingale and we understood at last why he is so desired a guest on the first stages of the world. He really has a charming lyrical baritone, amazing vocal plasticity and an excellent feeling of words, transfering the flavour of foreign languages – German, French, Italian. And thanks to his keen feeling for image there was a suddenness even in the most famous pieces such as Schubert’s Serenade or Fauré’s Le papillon et la fleur not to mention that the most part of his programme consisted of unfamiliar songs.
The programme was compiled tastefully and followed according to an idea. In each case every song’s block was finished with a serenade as a declaration of love to the author and with the “refrain”: farewell, mon cher, but don’t be sad, because a new morning (or new song) would change the previous one.
From “Commersant daily”, by E. Cheremnykh. Translated from Russian by Irina
A singing zoologist
The famous British baritone Simon Keenlyside sang the programme of Schubert, Brahms and Fauré songs in Beethoven’s hall of the Bolshoi Theatre completing the cycle “Chamber evenings in Bolshoi Theatre”.
As in the case of the others who performed in “Chamber evenings” this was Simon Keenlyside’s debut in Russia. And he behaved modestly and with good humour, more as a tourist than as a recognized, knowing-his-own-worth operatic star.
The programme of his performance - Schubert in the 1st part and Brahms and Fauré in the 2nd part – was like a song of three couplets. The beginning of each of them was shrouded by half-illusory fog of Schubert’s Verklärung, Brahms’ Auf dem Kirchhofe and Fauré’s Mandoline. And at the end of each part a serenade sung as a refrain.
Completed with only one hit song in Schubert’s part of the evening, Keenlyside, it seemed, breathed the danger of a romantic whirlpool of images – Freiwilliges Versinken, Der Tod und das Mädchen, Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, Himmelsfunken. It was not a polished performance of each song, but a unique growing of each song into another one.
Keenlyside’s voice is masculine, firm, but as if draped with velvet. In songs his baritone sounds simply, ingenuously, not showily. He has a huge range, edging notes with absolute precision, and easily managed breathing. At the same time Keenlyside doesn’t hurry to please the public, he doesn’t strive to copy the baritone’s “flagship” of the past – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Keenlyside’s voice fascinates as in a dream with boundless transformations from recitative into melody, from a big full sound to a whisper, from bass tessitura to almost tenor heights. Sometimes you hear a timbre of unusual beauty and fall in love with it. This miracle of vocal mobility added the improbable effect of moving images to the eleven Schubert songs, and revealed the coldness and exactitude of a scientific documentary film in Brahms’ songs (especially in Vor dem Fenster and Die Mainacht), and revealed similiarity with rare films of Lumiere’s period in Fauré’s miniatures. Here is rustling in Fauré’s Green, here is a dreaming lover in the romance Le Secret, here Le papillon et la fleur are whirling in a waltz… Keenlyside created images as if he was not an operatic star but some sort of Paganel – a researcher of moving images not noticed by eye and ear, details such as the inhaling of a cigarette in the romance Hôtel performed as an encore.