Winterreise

Last week to the Wigmore Hall to hear Roderick Williams, a baritone, and Iain Burnside, piano, do the Winterreise. Seemingly the first time we had heard Williams although I had heard Burnside before, noticed at reference 1.

Started with a handsome black lady in a handsome deep red coat on the platform at Epsom, a lady who responded rather shyly to my congratulations. Husband slightly more fulsome. Continued with deep red flowers at the Wigmore Hall, including freesias, carnations, anthuriums and geberas, these last being flowers which I took an instant dislike to when they first arrived, but now rather like them.

I liked the unstated platform style of the two musicians. Which included a little speech from Williams, a speech which included a show of hands of those for whom it was a first Winterreise - which turned out to be very few of us. His point being that it was intimidating to be in the Wigmore Hall, even more so with an audience who knew the work you were going to perform. He pointed us to the anecdote starting at page 154 about musicians in the audience in the Bostridge book, reference 3, mentioned at reference 2. It seems that if one musician attends a performance by another, it is the custom either to go back stage afterwards, or to send in a little note of appreciation. Doing neither would leave the performer wondering what he had done wrong. And performers do scan the audience to see if there is anyone there they know; they do know that they are there.

He also told us of being with Padmore in a pub in Cornwall, in the margins of some festival or other, to be told by Padmore that you really start to get the hang of the Winterreise when you have done it fifty or sixty times.

Started off with what sounded like a wrong note to me, in the first bar or so. Furthermore it all sounded a bit different, so I wondered whether this was the effect of the transposition to baritone from tenor, with Bostridge claiming that this can do odd things to the music. My own score is described at 'Hohe Stimme/High Voice', presumably tenor, which I had assumed was the original, but there is nothing in the accompanying notes about the matter. Furthermore, the key signature in my score is not the same as that illustrated. Sadly, my lack of musicology means I have to stop there.

I had thought to try following the words for once, but found that I could not do this unless I held the programme to my nose, which would irritate those around me, and so I desisted. BH followed them instead, our usual practise. But I still worry about how much I am missing. Maybe I will get around to memorising the names and subject matter of each of the 24 songs in the cycle; a good solution if I can get around to it.

Following the counting noticed at reference 4, I tried counting the songs, using the sun burst in the mural over the stage as a prop, and ended up one out, having got lost in the low twenties. Once again I found that the counting helped rather than hindered, despite getting it wrong. Odd.

All this notwithstanding, a fine performance from Williams and Burnside.

Very enthusiastic audience, but the two middle aged ladies to our right, were both serious fidgets, albeit in different ways, with the one nearest us finding a hundred and one different ways to play with her programme. I think that if I had been sat next to her I might have poked her or confiscated her programme. Easy to be bold about these things in theory!

Back down the hole at Oxford Circus to come across two cheerful ladies with the most elaborate looking selfie machine I have ever seen, more like a bit of optical equipment than a selfie stick.

A shiny new Siemens train to Raynes Park, a walk through train like those which have been running on the Wimbledon part of the District Line for some time now. Plus a seating plan intended for a lot of standing during the rush hours. So excited by the new train that we forget that we had intended to pay a visit to the Half Way House at Earlsfield, settling for a spot of DIY refreshment at home instead.

Where we also turned up the Bostridge reference, which turned to be an essay on something called triplet assimilation in the sixth song of the cycle, 'Wasserflut'. Something which is just about visible in the snap above if you know what to look for, but which is much more visible in a printed score. Something which can lead into all  kinds of musicological arcana and disputes, but a matter which Bostridge also holds to be important: it does make a difference whether or how you do it - although I am not sure if my ear is up to it. It all goes to show how much is going on under the hood which the average member of the audience - by which I mean myself - knows nothing about. While both my parents would have argued that the experience is enriched by knowing something about, both spending a lot of energy in their sometimes successful attempts to share this sort of knowledge.

As it happens, Bostridge uses a snap from the same manuscript as I have used (reference 6), to illustrate his essay.

Next stop July, when we now plan to hear the Angelika Kirchschlager (of reference 7) do it, our first winter lady, at the lawyers' Temple Church, first noticed at reference 5 and subsequently visited by me. This with thanks to the people at Bachtrack.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/cheese.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/winter-journey.html.

Reference 3: Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession - Ian Bostridge - 2015.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/on-counting-variations.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/festive-fayre.html.

Reference 6: http://www.themorgan.org/music/manuscript/115668/22.

Reference 7: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/last-songs.html.