It is one of the greatest singers of the last decades who appeared before us at Bourgie Hall on Monday evening. Anne Sofie von Otter obviously no longer has, at 67, the voice of her 30 years. But the artistic integrity and the emotion remain absolutely intact.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
The mezzo-soprano, majestic with her crimson dress and her long white hair, offered, in all simplicity, an anthology of lieder by Schubert and the Swedish Adolf Fredrik Lindblad (1801-1878) in the company of the prodigious South African pianofortist Kristian Bezuidenhout .
Lindblad is a wonderful discovery. We are certainly far from Schubert’s heights. But his melodies written in the middle of Romanticism compare favorably with those of a Loewe or even a Mendelssohn.
The singer presented herself, in English, the five melodies of her distant compatriot, who wrote the text of three of them. If some, like Aftonen (Evening) or Vaggvisa (Lullaby) adopt a more naive tone, others, like Mån tro, jo, jo! (Do you believe? Of course!) and Bröllopsfärden (Winter Wedding), open a door to certain torments of the soul.
We savor this rare opportunity to hear the Swedish language sung, which is easier on the ear than German and charming with its abundance of twin consonants. If the piano accompaniment is not always very varied, the melodic inspiration hardly dries up in these pages which we hope will be more widely distributed.
The voice obviously no longer has the firmness of yesteryear in the treble, especially in the nuance piano. The vibrato inevitably widened. But the bass still has body. And the voice still has a nice roundness.
Schubert’s eleven lieder, separated into four groups, were certainly the highlight of the evening. We hear well-known ones like Der Tod und das Mädchen (The Girl and Death) and three of the four Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister by Goethe, but also more confidential melodies of youth.
The mezzo-soprano interprets them with an eloquent sobriety, more restrained in the more interior songs, more extroverted in the others, moving her arms slightly away from her body to depict the action. The meaning of the text is constantly sovereign with, always, this light in the eyes which remains its trademark.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter in concert on Monday evening
In the dark Nachtstuck (Nocturne), when von Otter makes the words of the old man of Mayrhofer’s poem his own (“Soon it will be over / Soon I will sleep the long sleep / Which will release me from all pain”), one cannot help but think of the tragic death of her own husband four years ago…
the last song, Die Taubenpost (The Carrier Pigeon), also the last written by Schubert, however dispels the shadows left by the previous one and leaves us on a peaceful note: “Day and night, awake or asleep / It’s the same for him / As long as he can travel, travel / He is satisfied! »
We must also praise Kristian Bezuidenhout, one of the most brilliant elements of the young generation of pianofortists, who accompanies the singer with tact and commitment. The introduction of Der Tod und das Mädchen had something admirably twilight about it.
Three solo moments were also reserved for him during the evening, to our delight. The young forty-year-old absolutely won us over with his Rondo in A minorK.511, by Mozart and the slow movements of the sonatas in A minor, D.537, and in A major, D.664, by Schubert.
What sense of song! And what a color palette! The new fortepiano in Bourgie Hall has found a true artist in him. Because the musician takes the time to make the instrument sound, to let each of the themes unfold and to allow the music to breathe deeply. A great keyboard moment!
The two artists offered as an encore the famous lied Lachen und Weinen (Laughing and Crying) by Schubert and Try to Remembera song from the musical The Fantasticks whom the mezzo-soprano has known since adolescence.