A Song Cycle With Bells On

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The New York Sun

There are four distinct types of song recitals. The most popular are those mounted by opera singers, who are often woefully untrained to sing lieder; the song portion of the evening tends to be short at these events, and everyone waits for the encores, which will consist of opera highlights. Recitals can also be crazyquilts of individual songs with little rhyme or reason to their juxtapositioning. Then, of course, there are the programs wherein an actual lieder singer comes to perform. And then there are presentations of a much more substantial menu that impresses with a unified structure designed by its composer: the song cycle.


On Sunday afternoon at Alice Tully Hall, a close to sold-out crowd was treated to arguably the greatest song cycle in music history, Franz Schubert’s “Winterreise” (“A Winter’s Journey”). Christoph Pregardien, a lieder singer by training, exhibited remarkable restraint in what can be an overwhelmingly emotional work.


Mr. Pregardein is a tenor, and some might argue that their favorite “Winterreise” of the past has been sung by a baritone (in my case Gerhard Huesch and, amongst the public, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau). But many fine tenors have had a successful run with the piece, most recently Ian Bostridge.


Mr. Pregardien does indeed sing opera on the European stage – everyone has to eat – but he established his bona fides as a lied expert from the very opening song. (By the way, you know that it is going to be a dark event when the curtain raiser is titled “Good Night”.) He has a silken voice and seemed to keep it at a low volume tailored to the auditorium’s intimacy. His lower register is extremely rich, and the coloration is in direct ratio to the subterranean distance from middle C. There was never a passage in this entire realization that wasn’t admirable and in tune.


I must always remember to be careful what I wish for. Operatic excesses were indeed banished and replaced by the strictures of good taste: For example, in the high note on the word “elend” in the song “Einsamkeit” (“Loneliness”), where Mr. Pregardein eschewed the false god of sustaining the tone in favor of a clean but fleeting visit. But this type of ascetic and self-effacing music-making led to a rather pale representation of the emotional landscape. Mr. Pregardien was missing, in the words of the critic Robert Schumann, “the cold wind of the grave.”


Mr. Pregardein was much stronger in the normally quiet songs, like “Der Wegweiser” (“The Signpost”) and “Der Lindenbaum” (“The Linden Tree”). Gustav Mahler, in his Symphony No. 1, quotes freely from his own lied “Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz” (“The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved”). In this song the protagonist encounters a lime tree “… where I first found peace in sleep.” Any Viennese music lover would have easily recognized that this is indeed Schubert’s “Der Lindenbaum,” where the hero “… would have found rest.” Mahler juxtaposes the rhythms of the funeral march that is the heart of his movement with the melody of the lied to leave the impression, identical with that of the Schubert, that the hero’s resting place under the Linden tree is in fact his grave. Sunday’s singer established just such an atmosphere of quietude.


Close to the end of this song, though, the fire bell rang. This tocsin repeated its lugubrious, ominous tone many times, eventually stopping Mr. Pregardien and his accompanist Dennis Helmrich in their tracks. I am proud to state that not one of us hardy New York music lovers left the theater: We preferred the prospect of going down in flames to that of missing even one Schubert song. Eventually order was restored and the recital resumed.


But not for long. At the conclusion of “Auf dem Flusse” (“On the Stream”), the bell went off again, and this time the performers left the stage. Please don’t tell Mr. Scoppetta, but Lincoln Center announced that they were going to tape up the bell to prevent further intrusion, and the remainder of the program was undisturbed. Apparently, the culprit was a drop in water pressure at the Juilliard School upstairs.


The New York Sun

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