I've always found it hard to warm to Ian Bostridge's voice. Though his technique is solid, particularly in terms of finely drawn rhythms and crisp diction, his rather silvery tone and his very arch manner of phrasing means that his voice often comes across as somewhat cold and unfeeling, particularly in lighter, or more tender, music.
This duality of technique and affect was to the fore in the singer’s Schubert recital this evening at the Wigmore Hall. With Antonio Pappano moonlighting on piano, the duo focused on lieder written in the final year of the composer's life (Schwanengesang and three others). Some of the overheard audience reaction at the end encapsulated very well the tenor of the performances. Many people were visibly stirred, with a woman behind me announcing her feeling of 'revelation'. Others were less impressed, with one particularly animated conversation between two ladies focusing on the soreness each felt for the lack of portamento and expressivity, as they saw it, in modern singing. Bostridge, to their ears, being more culpable than most for such. The tenor of the audience’s reactions, going on this small sample, was unusually perceptive.
The evening began like a veritable cabaret, with one of the house's employees cheerfully explaining to the audience the need for phones to be turned fully off, not merely to silent, and pleading with them that if they needed to cough to please cover their mouths in order that the sound be muffled. Looking around at the packed and jolly hall of (even more than usually) elderly clientele, one got the impression of somehow having stumbled onto a cruise ship, or a music hall. Such an impression was quickly dispelled on the entrance of the musicians, however, who wasted little time in getting down to the business of performance. Setting a pattern that was to hold for the rest of the concert, Bostridge froze the room with his rather severe manner, exuding little fanfare, directing our attention instead to the music. We noticed, then, the many injuctions on the programme warning against coughing, even discouraging the audience from turning their pages until the right moments. This, clearly, was to be a serious and solemn concert.
The first three lieder, 'Widerschein', 'Der Winterabend', and 'Die Sterne', were dispatched rather coolly, though not without a certain assuredness. The halting line in the first, with its distinctive quaver rests, was given with winning precision by the singer. The second was more affecting, with Bostridge's performance achieving a tone of plaintiveness that was relieved, cushioned, by the carpeting semiquaver right hand of the piano. ‘Die Sterne’ was forthright, with each musician bringing variety, and a felt emotional progression, to the aspirant, stargazing verses.
Schwanengesang was truncated for the main concert, only to be completed by the encore. The decision to leave Seidl's 'Die Taubenpost' until that brief encore worked very well, its jauntiness presenting something of an unwanted answer to the bleak and impressively expansive grief of 'Der Dopplegänger'.
The performance matured over its course into an authoritative, deeply melancholic account of a distant beloved called to across various scenarios and personalities. Though Pappano's playing often lacked subtlety, sounding heavy handed and excessively robust throughout, even tonally insensitive, he was competent enough in the brighter numbers. And he came through with impressively stormy playing in such items as 'Kriegers Ahnung', where the battle imagery in the words and music brought out a stunning display of valediction from Bostridge, Ständchen (with the singer on particularly enthralling form), and 'Atlas', whose Sturm und Drang character brought out an imperious evocation of consuming despondency from both musicians.
Singer and pianist excelled likewise in an unsettling 'Die Stadt', before closing with an emotionally full and musically broad 'Der Dopplegänger', where the growing strength and musical intricacy of the performance reached its zenith. An intimate opening to this final number gave way across breaking, spilling phrases, to an astonishing emotional summit. Bostridge's inimitable ability to capture complex self-loathing and self-rapprochement (heard to great effect as Caliban in Ades' The Tempest) peaked as he shuddered at his own reflection in the moon, before a dark conclusion. The singer's great interpretative intelligence was on display throughout this performance, in the end allowing his cold and arched manner to work to an advantage, the singer incorporating it into an emotionally convincing, and musically complex, reading.
Photo: Ian Bostridge
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