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Recital
9 January 2008
Wigmore Hall, London
Five out of five stars: The Evening Standard
Simon Keenlyside
Malcolm Martineau
Programme
Robert Schumann: Dichterliebe song cycle
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai
Aus meinen Tränen sprießen
Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne
Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’
Ich will meine Seele tauchen
Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome
Ich grolle nicht
Und wüßten’s die Blumen
Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen
Hör ich das Liedchen klingen
Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen
Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen
Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet
Allnächtlich im Traume seh’ ich dich
Aus alten Märchen winkt es
Die alten, bösen Lieder
Interval
George Butterworth: Six songs from A Shropshire Lad
Loveliest of Trees
When I was one-and-twenty
Look not in my eyes
Think no more, lad
The lads in their hundreds
Is my team ploughing?
Francis Poulenc:
Montparnasse
Mazurka
Un poème
Le disparu
Francis Poulenc: Tel jour telle nuit song cycle
Bonne journée
Une ruine coquille vide
Le front comme un drapeau perdu
Une roulette couverte
À toutes brides
Une herbe pauvre
Je n’ai envie que de t’aimer
Figure de force brûlante et farouche
Nous avons fait la nuit
Encores
Francis Poulenc:
Carte-postale
Avant le cinéma
Gabriele Fauré:
Mandoline
What the critics say
Barry Millington, Evening Standard, 10 January 2008
Simon Keenlyside And Malcolm Martineau: Three Great Song Cycles
Rating: Five out of five stars
The prospect of a lieder recital by Simon Keenlyside, one of Britain's most outstanding baritones, is enough to whet the appetite.
But the promise of no fewer than three major song cycles in the same programme was one to generate a long queue at the box office for returns.
The first cycle was Schumann's Dichterliebe, that heart-tugging evocation of the joys and sorrows of love, from the thrill of discovery, through the gnawing agonies of doubt to the bitter despair of rejection.
Keenlyside and his ever-perceptive partner, Malcolm Martineau, traced the arc of love won and lost in a succession of powerful readings.
Taking the optional high line in Ich Grolle Nicht was a courageous thing for a baritone to do but somehow it epitomised the emotional intensity and darkness of colouring he brought to the whole cycle.
Occasionally in recital, Keenlyside has seemed less focused than here, wandering about the stage in casual mode. There was little of that last night, though there was a possibly accidental, but telling, bit of stage choreography in George Butterworth's Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad.
First came the enforced jollity of Think no More, Lad (delivered with terrific punch by both singer and pianist) and the moving elegy to The Lads in their Hundreds, "that will die in their glory and never grow old" (Butterworth's and Housman's premonitions of war inevitably colour the setting).
Then, before Is my Team Ploughing, Keenlyside described a complete cycle on the stage, returning to face the audience in the persona of the ghost of the dead man, whose sweetheart turns out to be occupying the bed of his friend.
Riveting stuff, as was Poulenc's Tel Jour Telle Nuit, its affected insouciance and febrile ardour alike dispatched with unequivocal mastery.
An impressive start to Martineau's complete Poulenc series.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 11 January 2008
http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/reviews/story/0,,2239107,00.html
Rating: Four out of five stars
In choosing the programme for his Wigmore Hall recital, Simon Keenlyside hardly let himself off lightly. Basing it on three great song cycles, each one of the supreme masterpieces in their respective traditions, the baritone left himself little margin for miscalculation.
The concert hall still seems a slightly alien environment to a singer who inhabits an opera stage so instinctively, and uses his body to articulate mood and emotion. But his platform manner is much more contained now, and though there is still the odd suggestion of the song equivalent of painting by numbers - forceful, extrovert tone for this verse, withdrawn introspection for the next - in English and French especially his responses seem more instinctive and naturally expressive than before.
The voice and Keenlyside's control over it were outstanding. Even in Schumann's Dichterliebe, where there was too little effort to make the audience listen to every word rather than admire the general effect, the sounds he made were glorious. Yet it was Malcolm Martineau's accompaniments that caught the ear most powerfully.
Six of Butterworth's Shropshire Lad settings, ending with Is My Team Ploughing?, were hauntingly delivered, with the switches between innocent reverie and poignant nostalgia perfectly judged; only the dialogue between the living and the dead in Is My Team was a bit too archly characterised. Then it was on to Poulenc, concentrating on the two poets he set more than any others, Apollinaire and Eluard. Keenlyside ended with Poulenc's song masterpiece, the Eluard cycle Tel Jour Telle Nuit, a sequence of love songs as profound as any in 20th-century music, for which he regularly found precisely the right tone, and the perfect poise for the last and greatest of all, Nous Avons Fait la Nuit.
John Woods, www.musicalcriticism.com, 10 January 2007
http://www.musicalcriticism.com/concerts/wigmore-keenlyside-0108.shtml
Rating: Four out of five stars
It was very interesting to hear Simon Keenlyside perform Schumann's Dichterliebe so soon after Thomas Hampson's inclusion of the same work on his recent programme in the same hall.
Although both men are fine lyric baritones regularly billed on the rosters of the worlds greatest opera houses, their respective interpretations could not have been more different. While Hampson's was mellifluous, characterised by a suavity and, his perfect diction notwithstanding, phrased as much in the service of the composer as of the poet, Keenlyside's was far more edgy, urgent and text-driven.
This urgency came partly from Keenlyside and Martineau's choice to perform every single song attacca after the preceding song (marked in the score only between the first and second songs), from some rubati which bordered on the extreme, and from Keenlyside's platform manner. Unlike his appearances in opera, in which he is never less than a convincing actor, Keenlyside appears to feel the exposure on the stage acutely during recitals, and comes across as extremely self-conscious. The constant gripping and releasing of the piano, the pacing, putting of his hands in his pockets, and rising on tip-toe are not ideal in a lieder recital, when all one wants is to concentrate on the singing and the interpretation. One option for the audience member is to follow the text closely, but in so doing, the other rather distinctive elements of his approach were thrown into sharp relief.
The tempo of 'Ich grolle nicht' was pulled about to such an extent that I am not sure it could still be considered rubato – more an absolutely manifest change of speed for a few bars, and then back again. This song climaxed thrillingly, replete with a top A, but I did not feel it was an entirely successful rendition of this amazing dramatic gem from Schumann's output, as Martineau and Keenlyside's approach to the rest of it was rather serene. The decision to go straight into 'Und wüssten's die Blumen' without so much as a comma served the performers very well in that it prevented the audience from unwrapping sweets, having a cough and shuffling their feet. But from an audience point of view, we would have at least benefited from a few seconds to collect ourselves after such strong singing and intense emotion in the closing bars of the preceding song.
Keenlyside gave a very detailed reading of the text. I almost found it too detailed and interventionist in parts, as if he had thought too much about it. The comma he meticulously observed after the word 'doch' in the last line of the fourth song, 'doch wenn du sprichst: ich liebe dich! So muss ich weinen bitterlich', which is not even in the poem, was a case in point. I did wonder if he would deliver his native language in the same way once we got to it later in the programme, and sure enough, he did not. To my mind, he would do well to let his excellent German flow as naturally.
Vocally, the Schumann was the least successful part of the programme because of all the soft singing Keenlyside attempted. I don't feel he has ever resolved this aspect of his technical arsenal to quite the same high standard as the rest of his singing. The voice he adopts when singing piano is often without vibrato and as such, does not integrate into the line in the way it should, and leads to intonation problems. That aside, he was in his usual glorious voice, and he rounded off the cycle with a tremendous account of 'Die alten, bösen Lieder'. He was supported well by Martineau, who was an accompanist of great sensitivity throughout, but his preludes and postludes to those songs that have them were laced with the same rubato that threatened to derail 'Ich grolle nicht' and the results, to my mind, came across as slightly affected.
The Six Songs from George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad were given a very fine account, opening with a classily honed performance of 'Lovliest of trees'. 'Look not in my eyes' was marvelously heroic, while 'The lads in their hundreds' was beautifully artless, the text of this chilling poem packing a huge emotional punch in Keenlyside's straight-forward delivery of Butterworth's almost folk song-like setting. 'Is my team ploughing' revisited the piano singing of parts of the Schumann but was entirely appropriate in this piece, perfectly characterizing the disembodied voice of the dead lad and contrasting brilliantly with the intervening verses in which Keenlyside's rich voice was shown to great advantage.
The real highlight of the evening came with the group of Poulenc songs which received an absolutely first class performance. Keenlyside appeared to have relaxed sufficiently to bring some of his dramatic prowess over from the operatic stage, and he really appeared to get into the minds of the characters in the poems, aided by his excellent French. This applied equally to esoteric texts such as Apollinaire's 'Un poème' and those with a more literal, obvious meaning like Desnos's 'Le disparu'. 'Une herbe pauvre' was an incredible microcosm of emotion, traversing pity, delight, wonderment, delectation and dashed hope in its seven lines. But he saved the best until last, delivering a thrillingly intense performance of 'Nous avons fait la nuit', loaded with erotic atmosphere.
Although I will always think of Keenlyside as more of an opera singer than a recitalist, his Poulenc group will remain in my memory as one of the best song-group performances I have heard.
Richard Fairman, Financial Times, 10 January 2008
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7f976a24-bfa3-11dc-8052-0000779fd2ac.html
The Wigmore Hall boasts a number of benevolent ghosts. One of them must be Francis Poulenc, who had a long association with the hall, giving recitals with the baritone Pierre Bernac, and no doubt he will be haunting its hallowed stage again in the first half of 2008.
As one of its main themes this year the hall is offering a complete cycle of the Poulenc songs over a series of eight recitals. Other composers will be heard alongside – a surfeit of Poulenc’s heavily perfumed Gallic harmony might easily get up one’s nose – but a lot of rarely performed songs will have been heard by the end.
First up on Wednesday was Simon Keenlyside. It is hard for another baritone to be judged in Poulenc’s mélodies when the singing of Bernac is so indelibly stamped on them, both through his recordings and his well-known guides on how to master French song. No doubt his ghost will be pacing the Wigmore’s corridors, too, notebook in hand, to check how his successors are doing.
Perhaps fortunately for him, Keenlyside is a different kind of singer. He is less intent on the inflexions of the French language – this is where Bernac always scored, especially in Poulenc – but his baritone is of better quality in purely vocal terms. He was in very good voice on Wednesday and there was an impressive range to his singing in the cycle Tel jour, telle nuit. The leap in scale from the eerie hush of “Une ruine coquille vide” to the ringing passion of “Je n’ai envie que de t’aimer” was as big as this music could be asked to take, even if Bernac’s firm grip on detail was missing.
Two other cycles in different languages made up the programme. Schumann’s Dichterliebe, persuasively accompanied by Malcolm Martineau, was sung with warmth and a general sensitivity, and sometimes more – “Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen” was among the songs that tapped a more immediate, personal vein.
All of Butterworth’s Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad did the same, drawing on every sinew of a voice in its prime to bring to life these poetic stories of a generation doomed by war. We hardly needed to be told afterwards how deeply moving Keenlyside finds them. His singing had already made that clear.
Edward Seckerson, the Independent, 11 January 2008
http://arts.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article3328318.ece
Rating: Four out of five stars
The good news is that Simon Keenlyside has curbed his usual incessant prowling on the recital platform. Not only was he in resplendent voice for this ambitious Wigmore Hall programme, but the new-found stillness (or relative stillness) drew us more directly into his confidence. The nervous energy was still very much in evidence, but harnessing it physically made for an extraordinary tension in the singing. You can't lie in the recital hall, and the shifty body language always suggested he was doing just that. Not this time.
So began Schumann's Dichterliebe in the well of Malcolm Martineau's piano. Head bowed, hands tightly clasped, Keenlyside was suddenly a young man reliving the first flush of romance with each of the early songs – especially "Rose, lily, dove" – conveying the rush of infatuation and the feeling that these pleasant memories were to be seized and savoured lest they too quickly evaporate. With "In the Rhine, the holy river", they did, the darkening tone bringing a terrible portent of the central song in the cycle, "Ich grolle nicht" ("I bear no grudge"), where Keenlyside's stoicism gave way to bitter heartbreak with a sensationally brave high A-natural.
Thereafter, the pace slowed, giving the whole narrative a shapely inevitability. Martineau was an extraordinary collaborator, the terse piano punctuations in the effectively unaccompanied "I wept in my dream" suggesting the involuntary convulsions of a bad dream. His postlude to the final song brought great solace – and stillness from Keenlyside, for once visibly at peace.
Six songs from Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad then mourned the lost youth of war in that jolly, virile, casually ironic English way. Keenlyside brought poignancy to the duet-for-one, life-and-death drama of "Is my team ploughing", and, as he pointed out, Housman's First World War texts are sadly just as relevant now.
After which, Poulenc sat somewhat uneasily. "Gone missing" struck a chord or two, being a deceptively sad song penned during the Occupation of Paris, but the surrealism of Eluard's texts for "Tel jour, telle nuit" seemed remote after so much emotional immediacy. Still, Keenlyside seemed to enjoy the fanciful and dramatic way the voice wrapped itself around the words, and with his heady mezza voce working overtime, he carried us through to a thrilling climax with "We have created night". Love lost, love found, love lost again – our heads were spinning.
Anthony Holden, The Observer,
13 January 2008
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2239782,00.html
Back in London, the musical scene emerged from its festive torpor with a superb recital by British baritone Simon Keenlyside, overflowing the Wigmore Hall, where his exemplary accompanist Malcolm Martineau is masterminding a complete Poulenc series. It is not often that Schumann's Dichterliebe is programmed as a mere hors d'oeuvre; on this occasion, it constituted a spellbinding first half before Butterworth's settings of Housman's A Shropshire Lad and some 15 Poulenc gems. His atmospheric readings of Apollinaire preceded the evening's climactic showcase, Tel jour, telle nuit, nine of Paul Eluard's quirkier poems given wonderfully evocative treatment by Poulenc. As, indeed, they were by Keenlyside, whose vocal range and agility enable him to conjure a response to such rich material as subtle as it was sensitive, often daring, reminding us that this supreme operatic artist can perform just as theatrically in white tie and tails.
Hilary Finch, The Times, 14 January 2008
Rating: Four out of five stars
Love in a time of war. And with Simon Keenlyside and Malcolm Martineau to meditate upon it, it is small wonder that there wasn't a seat to be had. What is more, Keenlyside was beginning the Wigmore's series of eight concerts, devised by Martineau, in which Poulenc's entire song output will be covered for the first time in a single season in London.
Poulenc is at his most moving in adversity; and songs written during the Occupation, such as Le disparu, fuse musical nonchalance and pain in a way in which Keenlyside's baritone knows just how to respond. The melancholy of Mazurka, and the mordent sensuality of Un poème, found answering colours in his sensitised palette of a baritone.
Both Keenlyside and Martineau really came into their own in the elusive aching of pain and pleasure that hangs over Poulenc's settings of the surreal poetry of Paul Eluard in the nine songs of Tel jour, telle nuit. Keenlyside's searingly powerful head voice, and his sensing out of the nerves and sinews of the French language, was thrilling, and moving too.
None of these songs would have had quite such a powerful effect had they not immediately followed a quite outstanding performance of Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad. It's not the sort of thing you'd expect Keenlyside to take on, perhaps; yet this was possibly the most eloquent performance that this hall has heard in decades. The opening word of Loveliest of trees, poised high and hushed, carried the scent and the bloom of spring in the voice. And Keenlyside's fusion of earthy, conversational inflection with classical poise exactly recreated the sensibility of Housman's poetry.
Keenlyside had begun with Schumann's Dichterliebe. He sang more freely once it was over, as though aware that, for him, this was the supreme Wigmore Hall test piece. But his deceptively artless approach (it recalled Keats's words about the need for poetry to come as naturally as leaves to a tree) won the audience over, and Martineau's playing supplied any remaining subtext of wonder or angst.
Ivan Hewett, the Telegraph, 14 January 2008
Simon Keenlyside: the impassioned heights of a great love song
Not so long ago the French composer Francis Poulenc was dismissed as a kind of high-class musical pastry-maker. Serious music-lovers disdained his songs, which they thought had more than a touch of café-concert sentimentality, and were even more shocked by the naughty jazz chords he sneaked into his settings of the Latin liturgy.
Thank goodness the puritanism of those times has gone, and we can appreciate Poulenc's subtlety and range, and the tragic intensity lurking under the charm, without feeling slightly guilty about it. It's a sign of how far times have changed that the Wigmore Hall can now promote a whole series of recitals focused on his songs. This wonderful concert from the baritone Simon Keenlyside and pianist Malcolm Martineau was the first of them.
Rather than starting with Poulenc, Keenlyside launched off with Schumann's immortal song-cycle Dichterliebe ("A Poet's Love"). This might seem like warming up for a hike over the Yorkshire Dales by first climbing Mont Blanc. But Poulenc didn't seem like a foothill put next to a mountain, even though the Schumann was thrillingly intense. When the tenor Ian Bostridge sang this cycle in this same hall recently, he seemed the perfect reflection of the "pale, sad man" mentioned in the text. Keenlyside was completely different: impassioned, seething, ringing out on high notes with heroic force.
The climax of the most famous song, Ich Grolle Nicht ("I blame thee not"), was marvellous - anger and Byronic scorn and self-pity all wrapped up in one blazing moment.
With the following six songs from George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad, we were in gentler territory. But these evocations of rural England before the First World War are not merely nostalgic, and Keenlyside brought out their stoicism and ironic humour as well as their gentleness.
Then it was time for the Poulenc songs, centred on his first great song cycle, Tel jour, telle nuit, of 1937. The mixture of obscure surrealist poetry and Poulenc's very subtle style - part Dada jokiness, part neo-classical grandeur, part sentimental chanson - makes them very hard to bring off. But how well Keenlyside achieved it, and how well Martineau brought out the combination of seduction and stark severity in the piano part.
At its end, the cycle rises to the impassioned heights of Nous avons fait la nuit ("We have created night"), which in this performance seemed one of the greatest love songs ever penned.