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Recital

15 July 2007

Prinzregententheater, Munich

As part of the Munich Opera Festival

Simon Keenlyside

Malcolm Martineau

 

Gustav Mahler

·        Ich atmet einen linden Duft (Rückert)

·        Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt (Des Knaben Wunderhorn)

·        Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder (Rückert)

·        Frühlingsmorgen (Leander)

·        Liebst du um Schönheit (Rückert)

·        Um Mitternacht (Rückert)

·        Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (Rückert)

Richard Strauss

·        Waldesfahrt (Op 69)

·        Winternacht (Op 15)

·        Waldseligkeit (Op 49)

·        Junggesellenschwur (Op 49)

·        Ständchen (Op 17)

 

Franz Schubert

·        Der Wanderer an den Mond (Op 80 No 1)
An den Mond in einer Herbstnacht (D614)
An die Leier (Op 56 No 1)
Geheimes (D719)
Blondel zu Marien (D626)
Prometheus (D674)
Der Wanderer (Op 65. No 2)
Dass sie hier gewesen (D775)
Die Sterne (D176)
Im Walde (Op 93 No 1, D834)

Encores

·        Gustav Mahler: Scheiden und Meiden

·        Richard Strauss: Befreit

·        Franz Schubert: Nachtviolen

 

What the critics say

 

Süddeutche Zeitung, 17 July 2007 (Egbert Tholl)

Translated by Ursula Turecek

Carried away from the world

Simon Keenlyside’s individual recital

It rarely happens that you want to hear a recital a second time to form an opinion. But it is one of the stagecraft’s features that the moment is unique – and Simon Keenlyside’s recital at the Prinzregententheater has many unique moments in store. Keenlyside and his phenomenal piano accompanist Malcolm Martineau enchant with boyish charm, even with waggishness, they come across like a juvenile version of Gilbert & George. And yet Keenlyside does not  approach the completely enthused audience at all aggressively, he comes across as withdrawn, burdened with the burden to do justice to each song. He comes across as „lost to the world“ – and forms this last of seven Mahler lieder, performed unsettlingly, in a beguilingly beautiful elegy of mourning.

The baritone Keenlyside uses falsetto as a means of expression and succeeds to a large extent to remove the aura of mannerism from this extremely artificial singing. Again and again he tries to form an operatic scene from the songs, succeeds to radiate furiously in an unusual selection of songs by Strauss and Schubert, only to retire into himself again in extremely slow tempi. He only comes across as „Befreit“ [liberated] in Strauss’s meaning, in the encores – what irritatingly had been suggested in Schubert rather than in Strauss comes true now in elastic grandeur. Now he is singing for the audience who until then was allowed to partake in a dazzling, at times disparate and frail introspection that hardly allows to comprise this festival-recital entirely.

Merkur, 17 July 2007 (Gabriele Luster)

Translated by Ursula Turecek

Emotional states

Munich Opera Festival: Simon Keenlyside’s recital

He is no massively fat-voiced baritone, but one of the sinewy kind who wins his audience with slender voice, simple concentration and clever interpretation. At the Festival recital at the Prinzregententheater Simon Keenlyside captured with ease his Munich audience which was interspersed with fans. And all this despite of a very restrained, in fact almost a little brittle beginning with songs by Gustav Mahler where the intonation did not always turn out flawlessly. Keenlyside started easily (“Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft”), sung without vibrato and with calm, instrumental voice and impressive textual lucidity. He seasoned “Des Antonius zu Padua Fischpredigt” with ironic subtlety, exactly as did Malcolm Martineau who illuminated his piano part sensitively and beguilingly into all ramifications.

Although the singer sent “Steh’ auf!” [Get up!] in “Frühlingsmorgen” as an irresistible invitation into the audience he could not hide that the falsetto heights often turn out too “light”. With what mastery Keenlyside and Martineau are capable to capture moods and emotional states, they demonstrated in Mahler’s unworldlyness and in Richard Strauss’s “Waldesfahrt” with a cheeky giggle, or in the simple veracity of “Waldseligkeit”. Strauss’s “Ständchen” came along in an unusually light-footed manner and hit its target.

With the Schubert lieder the baritone also mixed well-known ones with some that are heard less frequently, and he was convincing in the sensitive interpretation of inner conflict, melancholy,  resignation and impressed as “Prometheus” rebelling in a dramatic and imperious way.