Goerne and Andsnes: Death (and life) at Carnegie Hall

To be perfectly frank, Gentle Readers, I went into Matthias Goerne's Tuesday night recital with some doubts as to how a program constructed using selections from the Rückert-Lieder, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and the Kindertotenlieder, as well as Shostakovich's settings of Michaelangelo sonnets (Op. 145,) would work. In the event, Goerne and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes gave a bold, gripping, and ultimately haunting performance. Whether hallucinatory or bitterly realistic, these meditations on the transformations of death were beautifully realized by pianist and singer. I was repeatedly astonished--and fascinated--by Goerne's powerful and flexible instrument, and the variety of emotional colors found by Andsnes in the piano part. The Mahler selections I know relatively well; the Shostakovich I knew not at all; interwoven, they proved emotionally powerful and philosophically stimulating.

Program:

MAHLER "Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft" SHOSTAKOVICH "Morning," Op. 145, No. 2 MAHLER "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" SHOSTAKOVICH "Separation," Op. 145, No. 4 MAHLER "Es sungen drei Engel" MAHLER "Das irdische Leben" MAHLER "Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen" MAHLER "Wenn dein Mütterlein" MAHLER "Urlicht" SHOSTAKOVICH "Night," Op. 145, No. 9 MAHLER "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" SHOSTAKOVICH "Immortality," Op. 45, No. 11 SHOSTAKOVICH "Dante," Op. 145, No. 6 MAHLER "Revelge" SHOSTAKOVICH "Death," Op. 145, No. 10 MAHLER "Der Tamboursg'sell"

The first four songs were dreamily meditative, tones of melancholy becoming increasingly prominent in "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" and "Separation." Goerne's use of text, and Andsnes' muted playing, suffused the final stanzas of the Mahler with a dreamlike awe. The influence of hymnody on "Es sungen drei Engel" was apparent in the style of Andsnes' playing, as well as the harmonies. The folktale shape of "Das irdische Leben" was belied by Goerne's dark, savage delivery, at a somewhat faster pace than I am accustomed to hearing. The last line, describing the child on the bier, was delivered not as an exclamation point, but as an expression of inconsolable disbelief that the unimaginable had happened. "Nun seh' ich wohl" was an aching threnody. Thereafter came another emotional turning point, with Andsnes' accompaniment for "Wenn dein Mütterlein" reminiscent of a Bach prelude in its clarity and purity. "Urlicht" was beautifully filled with silences, with Goerne's phrasing long, unstrained, suffused with deep longing, and deep confidence.
I was occasionally forgetting to breathe by this point, so the interval offered a welcome opportunity to inhale deeply (and restore circulation to cramped limbs, as we were sitting very still in the balcony.) "Night," like "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," offered a reflection on death as peace, but focused on the turmoil of the world, rather than its abandonment. Shostakovich's "Immortality," with eerie harmonies at the extremities of the keyboard, destabilized the calm certainties of Mahler with a hallucinatory meditation on the remembrance of the dead by the living... and of the living by the dead. Here came the last turn of the evening, towards increasingly angry and surreal confrontations with mortality. Goerne's superb use of text in "Revelge" kept me spellbound, with an ever-increasing sense of unheimlichkeit infusing the drummer's refrain. Andsnes brought out powerful echoes of Russian church music in the piano part of "Death," which set words of bitter, human rage to a solemnly liturgical melody. The drumrolls of "Der Tamboursg'sell" were evoked with chilling effect by the piano, and Goerne's delivery was of an apparent simplicity alert to layers of tragedy, with ironic emphasis given to "Leibkompanie," his last "Gute Nacht" dying into a stricken silence.

In response to prolonged and enthusiastic applause, Goerne and Andsnes gave a generous encore of Beethoven's rarely performed "An die Hoffnung," Op. 94. This was previously unknown to me, but had my riveted attention from the opening lines: "Ob ein Gott sei? Ob er einst erfülle was die Sehnsucht weinend sich verspricht?" (The full text may be found here.) Goerne's delivery was impassioned as it had been throughout the evening, and I hung on his words. True to the spirit of the evening, the selection offers no concrete answers to the questions it poses, but the sheer beauty of Goerne's tone seemed to half-answer the invocation to hope. I should perhaps note that on this, my first live hearing of Goerne, I spent the first few songs wildly puzzling over how to describe his timbre. My first thought on his dark, rich baritone was that it was the opposite of metallic, a sound connected to nature. But inchoate impressions that a voice is like the sound of sun and shade on trees, of a cold river and the stones in it, communicate almost nothing (perhaps less than nothing.) Perhaps scarcely more helpfully, I was later put in mind of a cello: long lines of sound delivered with rich tone, always balancing between darkness and light, eloquent of Sehnsucht, seeming to be eloquent even of things which can scarcely be spoken, but sometimes sung.