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| Daniel Gortler,Daniel Johannsen(Michael Pavia) |
At the sixth concert of the 2022
Israeli Schubertiade, the final event taking place at the Israel Conservatory of
Music on February 3rd, there was more than a touch of spontaneity! Spontaneity was, however, typical of the Schubertiades that took place in the drawing rooms of
wealthy Viennese homes in the early 19th century. The original Schubertiades
were sociable, informal musical gatherings, where musicians and music-lovers
would gather to hear and play music. 'Cellist Raz Kohn, one of the
Schubertiade's founders (2007), and who serves as its artistic director,
"sang the praises" of the artists and other people who had made the
festival a reality in these uncertain times. Kohn also mentioned the uniqueness
of this specific Schubertiade concert, in which settings of Heine poems by
three Israeli composers would be performed. No new face to Israeli
audiences, Austrian tenor Daniel Johannsen, renowned for his interpretations of
the German Lied, performed throughout the evening alongside Israeli artists.
With the concert focusing mainly on
music to texts of Heinrich Heine, the event opened with a talk on Heine's
personality and dilemmas by researcher and
cultural critic Ariel Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld also spoke of the problems
involved in translating Heine's poetry. (Prof. Hirschfeld teaches Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, where he, himself, studied musicology and Hebrew literature).
Nothing could have better substantiated Hirschfeld's talk on Heine's crisis of
identity, the profound meeting of Heine's writing with Schubert's music, the
palpable psychological element of the German Lied and its emotional
unshackling, than Schubert's seminal song “Der Doppelgänger”, the penultimate
song of the posthumous Schwanengesang collection (D.957). Setting it to music
three months before his death (November 1828), Schubert lifted from its third
stanza the term (created by Jean Paul in 1796) to call his song “Der
Doppelgänger” (The Apparition/Double). Pacing it sparingly, Johannsen and
pianist Daniel Gortler led the listener into the song's frozen, eerie
soundscape via its sinister declamatory manner: the piano mostly tolls a
four-chord ostinato as the poet finds himself standing outside the house where
his beloved had once lived. He sees a man standing there, wringing his hands,
overcome with grief, only to realize that he is watching his ghostly self of
years earlier. Such a performance as was heard at the Tel Aviv concert leaves the listener deep in thought.
'Diamonds hast thou and pearls,
And all by which men
set store,
And of eyes hast
thou the finest –
Darling, what
wouldst thou more?'
An interesting
comparison was drawn between two settings of Heine's "Ich grolle
nicht" (I bear no grudge), as performed by Yair Polishook and Irit Rub.
First, Schumann's version, with the artists' intense expression of the
ambiguity playing out in the psyche of the lover and characterized by a struggle
between opposing emotions. A very different piece, Charles Ives' setting of the
text (written as a composition task when still a student) is certainly no protest song,
rather, reflective and intimate, with some waves of heightened emotion, and
cushioned in the congenial harmonies of the early 20th century.
Back to Schubert's
"Schwanengesang", there was an air of magic to Johannsen and
Gortler's performance of the charming song 'Das Fischermädchen' (The Fisher
Maiden), its light-of foot, lilting stepping out to a siciliano rhythm pleasing
the senses. Then to the artists' spine-chilling rendition of "Die Stadt'
(The Town), the obsessive octaves in the piano left hand setting off the
ghostly insistent arpeggio in the right hand, only to be twice interrupted by
passages in which the rhythm changes to that of a funeral march. Johannsen
evokes Heine's dark, disturbing text, underscoring each key word. Let's hear
more recitals at the hands of these superb Lied specialists!
Daniel Johannsen and
Irit Rub enjoy a long acquaintance, So, when there were sudden program changes
due to force majeure circumstances, Rub happily joined Johannsen to perform
some more songs not previously planned for the event and the artists took them
on with esprit and sangfroid. They began with Fanny Mendelssohn's gorgeous,
strophic 'Schwanenlied' (Swan Song), text: Heine, the song appearing in
print in 1846, the year before her death, as part of the first collection of
songs to be published under her own name. Heine was a friend of the Mendelssohn
family. Johannsen and Rub's beguiling and tender performance of the bittersweet song,
mirroring the Romantic practice of presenting lush nature descriptions also
referring to a state of mind, emerged both vocally and in the piano's steady
sixteenth-note figurations, as the artists displayed Fanny Mendelssohn's
attention to detail, her use of word painting and the song's magical
sprinklings of harmonic interest. Following their zestful, gently flexed
reading of Schubert's 'Der Wanderer an den Mond' (The Wanderer's Address to the
Moon) text: Seidl, Rub and Johannsen plumbed the layers of 'Am See' (By the
Lake), a Lied set to a text of the composer's contemporary, Franz von
Bruchmann. Both simple and hypnotic, the song highlights the relationship between
man and nature: the voice is brilliantly used to evoke the soul "flaming
brightly" as the piano emulates the waves. Johannsen spoke of this unique song as
"almost a Freudian picture". To conclude, the artists moved back to
Schubert's "Schwanengesang" and Heine's theme of alienation to
produce an uncompromising and powerful performance of 'Der Atlas', a song
portraying the unhappy lover as a hubristic seeker of universal happiness (or
pain), its text introducing imagery from Greek mythology and ironic
self-flagellation. Johannsen's heavier use of the voice and his ever-articulate
diction were compelling, the piano conveying the god-man's steps via Schubert's
pervasive use of dotted rhythms and the lower range of the keyboard.
The 2022 Schubertiade was bookended by instrumental works. Opening the concert itself, violinist Asi Matathias and Daniel Gortler played Franz Schubert's Sonata for violin and piano in A minor D.385, a work that might well have been played at a Schubertiade hosting friends and intellectuals at a private home, with the composer at the piano. Echoing the influences of Beethoven and Mozart, this early work already reveals Schubert's lush, Romantic melodiousness and his masterful chamber music interplay. Gortler and Matathias performed it with much grace and charm, almost disguising the complexity of its harmonic structure. The concert drew to a close with a touching performance of the Rondo Finale arranged from the final movement of Schubert's Piano Sonata D.850 for violin and piano by Carl Friedberg. Joining Matathias was his duo partner pianist Victor Stanislavsky, who was called on at short notice to stand in for Daniel Gortler.
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| Reut Ventorero,Irit Rub,Yair Polishook (Courtesy Y.Polishook) |
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| Asi Matathias,Victor Stanislavsky (Michael Pavia) |
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