Working example: Mark Padmore, a number one exponent of the Lieder repertoire for many years, has launched into a brief tour of the evergreen music cycle with pianist Mitsuko Uchida. After an preliminary US engagement in Baltimore on March 10, the pair carried out in Philadelphia on March 12, earlier than touring on to New York and Berkeley, California.
Up to now twenty years, I’ve heard Padmore twice prior on this music, and he’s dedicated it to disc with the pianist Paul Lewis and the fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout. It’s at all times intriguing to listen to how a efficiency adjustments with time and with a brand new perspective from the keyboard. When Padmore tackled these songs with Lewis, his voice nonetheless retained the clarion fantastic thing about its youth, with a gleaming tone and melting legato. He was the best complement to Müller’s poetry: nonetheless hopeful, not but misplaced. In contrast, Lewis’s sardonic accompaniment appeared to telegraph a fruitless quest.
Just a few years later, Padmore sounded a contact pale, which suited the drier, much less Romantic high quality of Bezuidenhout’s interval instrument. This was a gathering of equals, who advised a highway to Hell that had been sputtering out in entrance of them for a very long time.
Though Uchida and Padmore have collaborated and recorded collectively for a while, their pairing appeared greater than somewhat mismatched of their efficiency on the intimate Perelman Theater, the place the live performance was hosted by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Within the 5 years since I final encountered Padmore stay, his voice has develop into not solely extra hole however genuinely unsteady. Sustained notes slid off pitch like butter melting in a skillet. Phrases had been chopped aside in perilous locations. Padmore couldn’t at all times ideally management his quantity, although his voice took on a extra interesting tone in belted traces than in quieter utterances, which emerged with a parlando edge.
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Some singers use this music as a chance to eager and contort, so I respect that Padmore averted the worst instincts of recital appearing. Nonetheless, his tendency to face and ship made for a considerably static efficiency. Solely in “Der Leiermann” did he absolutely try to introduce some physicality into his interpretation, a haunted miming of the organ grinder’s limitless enjoying. At different occasions, he dreamily watched Uchida in postludes, as if to recommend the speaker’s listening to lovely music within the far-off distance. However the total impact was certainly one of flatness and repetition.
The austerity of Padmore’s present strategy may enchantment to sure listening, nevertheless it alienated me from the passionate feelings on the core of this music. The speaker of Müller’s poems is an idealistic younger man whose journey to the depths of despair is devastating partially due to his youth and the lack of his potential. In Padmore’s current guise, the descent feels too typically like a foregone conclusion.
It additionally feels out of step with the richness of Uchida’s enjoying model. Juicy, sustained phrases marked her strategy to Schubert’s music, lush however by no means showy for its personal sake. Even in additional forceful items like “Die Wetterfahne” or “Rückblick,” her accompaniment retained an important lyricism that appeared to signify a dream of peace amid the mounting torture. It was jarring to distinction the pure fantastic thing about her pianism to the acidic high quality of Padmore’s vocal property, and it didn’t appear as if Uchida made any concessions in tone or quantity to extra evenly match her associate’s capabilities.
Musicians typically return to acquainted terrain all through their careers within the hopes of discovering new insights or correcting previous errors. Within the case of Padmore and Winterreise, although, these performances ought to sign a journey’s finish.
Picture: Justin Pumfrey
