One of the very best Winterreises from a tenor, or any other
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 04/14/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Lately The Gramophone has lavished praise on the Winterreise of Mark Padmore, who brings to Schubert's great, mournful song cycle many years of experience, most of it in Baroque music. I was interested in hearing a light lyric tenor attempt the work, since that is the voice Schubert wrote it for, but the price one pays is that the more desperate and anguished songs are somewhat shortchanged emotionally. Fairly or not, we tend to ascribe weightier feelings to weightier voices. Werner Gura's timbre is just as light as Padmore's but more youthful-sounding and ardent, as befits the lovelorn wanderer's age. Already the singer has to his credit a moving Schwanengesang where he delivered anguish and passion with great emotional impact. For me, Gura stands above Padmore in his mastery of lieder.
So I came to his Winterreise with heightened expectations. The first few songs reveal what Gura's strategy is. He takes pains over his phrasing to add interest in the repetitive strophic songs, and when given a chance, he dramatizes the melody with theatrical flair. There's a sense of vibrancy and risk-taking that marks the best lieder singers. Another prominent song specialist, Ian Bostridge, follows the same strategy, but Gura has the advantage of a more naturally beautiful voice, not to mention complete ease with his native language. When Bostridge underlines the poetry, I feel that he's applying a studied gloss; when Gura does the same thing, it feels right because there's a felt connection between text and music. Others may take the reverse view, but few could argue against the beauty and force of Gura's new version. It is tender and touching from the outset and grows in stature until it reaches the eerie hushed catharsis of Der Leiermann at the very end. Nowhere along the way is emotion overblown into self-pity or melodrama.
Padmore's recording was extolled for having the accomplished soloist Paul Lewis as accompanist. I'd offer Christoph Berner, though far less known, as arguably finer. Lewis bends over backward to be unassuming, while Berner takes Schubert's piano part to be equal to the singer's. One hears him as an independent voice, which was also true of Benjamin Britten when paired with Peter Pears in the most wrenching and emotionally deep Winterreise I know. Berner plays an 1872 fortepiano, we are told, but it sounds exactly like a modern pianoforte to me.
Finally, Gura must be praised for finding a variety of tones where so many singers wind up giving us an emotional landscape that is too uniform and plaintive. The lost, lonely youth becomes alive before our eyes, and that's the ultimate compliment in lieder singing. His Winterreise belongs among the best from the past."
Track Listings (24) - Disc #1