On paper, the programme presented by Christine Schäfer and Graham Johnson in this Wigmore Hall recital had the potential to be an absolutely fascinating study of femininity as seen through the eyes of Teutonic male poets and composers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The performance opened with five Lieder from Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre as set by Schumann and closed with Wolf's settings of the same five poems, giving us two composers' takes on both the abused, highly romantic figure of Mignon and the rather more profane Philine, who delights in the conviviality made possible by the night.
In between, we had Brahms's Acht Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 57, the poems for which were considered unsuitable subject matter by some of the composer's peers due to their highly sensual (and unladylike) nature, and various Mädchenlieder – six songs from different opus numbers by Brahms, chosen apparently for the different aspects of womanhood they show.
I couldn't help feeling, however, that something about Schäfer's style of singing and interpretation prevented her from getting to the heart of the matter with any real conviction, so that the concert failed to add up to the sum of its parts. The singer's biography in the programme disclosed five very distinguished professors with whom she studied at the Berlin Conservatory, one of whom was the celebrated Yugoslavian soprano Sena Jurinac. Jurinac exemplified a vocal tradition that we think of as quintessentially Viennese in flavour, of which other representatives included Irmgard Seefried, Lisa Della Casa, and perhaps most famously, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Characterised by a lightness, incredible sinuousness, skilful marshalling of the breath, prevalent use of head voice colours and a certain restraint at the top of the range, it sounds rather at odds with current schools of singing, so it was a surprise to hear Schäfer embody all of its trademarks so comprehensively. It is also occasionally said, fairly or unfairly, that the style of singing epitomised by Jurinac and her colleagues led to performances which can seem mannered or affected to our ears. This was certainly how I felt about Schäfer in this concert because while she spun her breath with incredible mastery, she was also barely content to let a single syllable go by without some kind of interpretative gesture. Such an interventionist approach to interpretation of song detracted from the performances, to my mind. With so much detail at the micro level, the whole was robbed of its impact at the macro level, perhaps because the singer had thought too hard about the text and the music and made too many conscious decisions about how to put it across, rather than responded to the pieces more emotionally and directly.
This was especially apparent in Wolf's 'Philine', a setting which is relatively quick, highly chromatic, and syllabic. Part of Schäfer's expressive palette, quite validly, is a highly sensitive approach to pitch, so that notes can be a whisker sharp or flat (without being 'out of tune') depending on how she chooses to colour them, an effect used by many great singers. However, it was deployed so frequently in this song, where the intervals in the vocal line are not always what the ear expects and the harmonic context is unstable, that it was sometimes rather difficult to tell which notes she intended. The level of detail in Schäfer's delivery of the text rather robbed Philine of her racy joie de vivre and lent her something of an intellectual air.
The poem set as the first of Brahms's Op. 57, 'Von waldbekränzter Höhe', is an extremely beautiful and romantic text with an erotic under-current. Schäfer's poise and flexible line were highly admirable, but her use of a light portamento between pitches almost throughout, even where they were only a tone apart, robbed her performance of some sincerity and came across as self-consciously artistic as opposed to genuinely expressive of love and sexual desire. It was left to Graham Johnson to point up the depth of feeling in the words, which he did to great effect, particularly in the piano explosion before the fourth verse.
Schäfer's approach was far more appropriate to two other Brahms settings on the programme, 'Mädchenfluch' and 'Das Mädchen', both of which have more of a narrative drive and call less for the creation of atmosphere. Her rising passion in the former song was very effective, and brought out more of her beautiful timbre than we heard in other parts of the recital, and the humour in the latter song where she sings of scenting her face first with wormwood to put off unattractive suitors, and then with roses, to encourage more eligible men, was very convincing.
But it wasn't until one of the encores, Wolf's 'Auf ein altes Bild', that Schäfer sang with the simplicity I had been longing for all evening. Here was some really exquisite music making from both artists, finally allowing the quality of the composition to shine through of its own accord. If only such natural beauty had been present in the preceding performances, it would have been a truly wonderful recital from what is a first class voice, partnered by one of the greatest accompanists of our time.
By John Woods
Read recent concert reviews, including Kate Royal, Thomas Hampson and Simon Keenlyside's recitals at the Wigmore Hall, here.