The Wigmore Hall, which kept many of us sane in June with its live-streamed lunchtime series of concerts, is once more leading the way with its autumn season. One hundred concerts, this time with socially distanced live audiences, are planned between now and December, all of them live-streamed on the Wigmore’s website, then available to watch free on demand: the performances and streams will continue if the hall has to close to the public again .
The opening recital was given by Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber. Their programme of Schubert and Berg, bittersweet in tone, took its cue from the opening song, Schubert’s Abendbilder (“Images of evening”), and explored themes of night, sleep and dreams. Schubert’s settings of August Wilhelm Schlegel’s translations of Petrarch, hovering between declamation and lyricism, came at the midpoint, while Berg’s Altenberg Lieder, their nihilistic imagery tapping into the uncertainty of our times, formed the emotional climax. A final Schubert group, including Am Fenster and Alinde, reflected on ideas of loss and renewal.
Gerhaher’s recital partnership with Huber is a relationship of equals, in which baritone and pianist function as a single expressive unit, while confessional intimacy and emotional refinement characterise Gerhaher’s singing at its best. The way doubt undermines the knowing irony of Schubert’s Petrarch songs was marvellously done, while the Altenberg Lieder, gazing into infinity and finding only dissolution and paradox, sounded at once extreme and reined in. Huber’s ability both to underscore and expand the meaning of each vocal phrase, meanwhile, was heard to best advantage in Berg’s Op 2 songs, where the piano writing, teetering on atonality, alternately seduces and unnerves. The single encore, Schubert’s Auf dem Wasser zu singen, was breathtaking.
• Watch on YouTube or Wigmore Hall’s website.
