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This mortal coil
Thomas Quasthoff is beautifully harrowing in these songs of loss and
death, says Tim Ashley
Thursday August 02 2001
The Guardian
Schubert: Schwanengesang; Brahms: Four Serious Songs
Quasthoff/Zeyen
(DG)
Thomas Quasthoff's latest recital disc should, perhaps, come with
a health warning. In opting to juxtapose the final vocal works of
Schubert and Brahms, the great German bass-baritone has come up with
a programme of such uncompromising intensity that on first listening,
I had to pause at one point to recover a bit.
Both works are reflections on the nature of mortality. Schubert's
last 14 songs to texts by Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine and Johann
Seidl were written when he was terminally ill. They are linked by
themes of loss and separation, though the Heine settings press on
into hallucinatory terror, in which disturbing imagery is linked to
a musical extremism that peers forward to the expressionists. Brahms's
Four Serious Songs, meanwhile, were triggered by news of the final
illness of Clara Schumann. Brahms draws his texts from the Bible,
investing the words with a personal resonance that reflects the sense
of a life rendered meaningless, and - through St Paul's words, "If
I have not love, I am as sounding brass" - equating lost love with
lost inspiration.
The dark, plush sound of Quasthoff's voice, and the low keys he uses
for Schwanengesang, add to the sombre mood. His myriad inflections
of colour allow him to create an almost operatic persona for each
song. The Rellstab settings are finely laced with irony and flashes
of wit: the famous Serenade has a hectoring sexual urgency; In der
Ferne (Far Away) fills a desolate void with erotic nostalgia; Ade
(Farewell) winds down from bravado to regret. In the Heine songs, by
contrast, Quasthoff conveys heightened extremities of both sense and
sound. I can't think of anyone who equals him with Atlas's cry of "I
bear the unbearable",' or who captures better the erotic nastiness
of the close of Am Meer ("My soul withers from desire - she poisoned
me with her tears"). Unlike many performers, he integrates the final
song, the single Seidl setting, Die Taubenpost, into the whole
sequence, releasing grief in tenderness and allowing Schubert a
final shaft of hope before the end.
There is no such optimism in the Four Serious Songs, where the
sparseness of the writing quashes any flashes of hope. Quasthoff
adopts a drained, bleached-out tone, only changing it very occasionally:
a sudden moment of anger knocks you sideways at the start of the
third song, while in the fourth, his voice, rising to its upper
limits, floats and hovers briefly with seraphic radiance. Throughout
both works, Quasthoff's pianist, Justus Zeyen, matches him turn for
expressive turn. It is difficult, harrowing stuff - but both
performances rank among the best available of either work. The
Brahms, in particular, is the finest version I know.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
Janos Gereben/SF
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