G?rne disappoints, but not Brendel
When still in his twenties, Matthias G?rne recorded Winterreise as part of Hyperion's complete Schubert edition, and although this was not quite a reading to challenge the pre-eminence of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau or Peter Schreier, it was still a high achievement. As Gramophone commented on its release, "his elegiac, introspective and beautifully sung reading" constituted "a very good Winterreise that may one day become a great one." A student of Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, G?rne has been tipped for greatness from the beginning of his career. His voice is of an unusual beauty and flexibility, and he has come to use it with an interpretative freedom that can grip the most experienced of audiences.
Even a very good Winterreise makes for an overwhelming experience, and one would have been grateful to have had that when G?rne performed the cycle with Alfred Brendel at the Wigmore Hall last month. In fact, it took a lot of artistry on G?rne's part to leave one feeling as unmoved as one did. In the cycle, the wanderer's journey through the winter landscape takes him from romantic rejection to alienation and madness. G?rne's wanderer, however, sounded pretty unhinged from the start. Instead of using the tonal centre of his voice to present a character with whose anguish we could then identify, he opted to pit its expressive extremes against each other from the beginning. Too many songs were marked by the juxtaposition of a tone that was thin and vulnerable with one that was gruff, almost barking. The result was less a descent into despair than a series of pathological vignettes. Only in the final song did he allow himself a true, unmannered legato, and while it was quite beautiful, after what had gone before it had the effect of turning what should be the manifestation of the wanderer's final withdrawal into a moment of relief.
Brendel's reading of the piano part, in contrast, was masterly; alert to every harmonic nuance and subversion, his playing revealed subtleties of rhythm, inflection and rubato that would certainly have served the great Winterreise for which we had hoped. It is true that things went better in their second recital, in which Schwanengesang was preceded by Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte. A collection rather than a cycle, Schwanengesang encouraged greater expressive variation from G?rne. Even here, however, a keener attention to diction and evenness of tone, as well as a greater willingness to let the music speak for itself, would have made for a more powerful experience. G?rne is known to be an assiduous experimenter, and not every experiment can be successful. He has the voice, the musical intelligence and certainly the pianist to produce a great Winterreise. It's just disappointing that it wasn't this time.
Mendelssohn and Berg
Between them, the Barbican and the Festival Hall recently offered the chance to hear two standards of the violin repertoire thoroughly refreshed. At the Barbican, Colin Davis and Maxim Vengerov stepped in to replace Andr? Previn and Anne-Sophie Mutter who had both been struck down by a virus, and happily chose to give us Mendelssohn instead of Korngold. Vengerov's technique knows no limits, and his playing was elegant and impassioned, without being in the least self-regarding. If Davis and the LSO provided a slightly less than mercurial accompaniment, they did offer some notably refined playing in Debussy and Ravel. At the Festival Hall, Benjamin Schmid joined the Philharmonia under Frans Br?ggen in a revelatory performance of the Berg concerto. Br?ggen is a specialist in original instrument performances and perhaps because of this he found a rhythmic vitality in the Berg that gave the work an immediate intelligibility it can so easily lack. With Schmid's lyrically intense playing, this was a reading as cogent and moving as I've heard. With a powerfully concentrated account of the Eroica to follow, this was perhaps the most exciting concert of the orchestral season so far.
Till Fellner
Perhaps the most satisfying concert this month, however, was back at the Wigmore Hall, where Till Fellner gave us the first recital in a series in which he will play the whole of the second book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. In this first concert, he set the Bach against Brahms's Handel Variations and a selection from Kurt?g's J?t?kok. A pupil of Brendel, and just into his thirties, Fellner has a sound that is rich yet clearly articulated, as well as a tremendous sense of musical architecture, served by a rigorous control of dynamics. In the Bach, he found a different sonority to suit each piece, and shaped each voice within it. It is difficult to imagine a more persuasive reading of the concert, he set the Bach against Brahms's Handel Variations and a selection from Kurt?g, in which Fellner found both wit and poignancy, and his Brahms too was witty, as well as grand and delicate by turns. If the recording industry were not so derelict, he would by now have produced a series of major recordings - although, to their credit, ECM are due to release the first book of the Bach in the new year - and have received the kind of wide promotion he merits. The hall was only two thirds full for him. If the musical public has any sense, there won't be spare seats when he returns to give the second part of his series at the beginning of February.
