Schubert Scaled to Spellbound Heights: The Incandescent Lise Davidsen at Wigmore Hall

Above: Lise Davidsen sings ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’ live at the Metropolitan Opera in 2023.
Credit: Lise Davidsen (YouTube)

Ecstasy is death in opera. Perishing from lovesickness, its heroes hail surrender as a victory, survival as a vice. Despotic passions stupefy and impulse conquers all.

Pangs clang as ragingly in Sturm und Drang: a movement of Romantics spearheaded by Goethe among others. Dramatizing many of the author’s poems in his lieder, Schubert rendered epics pocket-sized: odes charting odysseys in song. Soprano Lise Davidsen recounted them for a recital with accompanist James Baillieu last night at Wigmore Hall’s 125^th Anniversary Concert.

‘Am Bach im Frühling’ (‘By the stream in spring’) let ripples linger in the languid phrasing of ‘Du brachst sie nun die kalte Rinde’ (‘Now you’ve broken the cold rind’): an opener that Davidsen rewarded with a dapple of appoggiatura. Natural cures were hardly apt for heartache, nonetheless. ‘Der Erde allgemeine Blüte / Kommt meinem Herzen nicht so gut’ (‘The flourishing of the whole earth cannot relieve my heart’) led the lamenter back to love’s entrapment in a slow diminuendo.

Exultation hastened ‘Mit tausendfacher Liebeswonne’ (‘With thousandfold delights of love’) in Schubert’s ‘Ganymed’ – a Goethe work that sees a Trojan prince enamoured with his halcyon surroundings. ‘Ah, on your breast I lie and languish’ (‘Ach, an deinem Busen / Lieg’ich und schmachte’) climbed in sensual bliss through Davidsen’s illustrious instrument: a landscape in itself. As a melisma limned his plea to be consumed by heaven’s ‘Alliebender Vater’ (‘all-loving Father’), the young regent earned celestial peace.

Pulsations stung pp chords with ‘Der Zwerg’ (‘The dwarf’): a sinister vignette of deadly envy. Strangling a defenceless queen, the villain casually reviled, ‘Du Selbst bist Schuld an diesem Leide,’ (‘You yourself are to blame for this suffering’) – filling the vocalist’s voice with colossal contempt. Repentant trepidation crept however into ‘einzig mir noch Freude,’ (‘your death alone can gladden me’): invidious vibrato hiding guilt. Vicissitudes of sharps and naturals executed with extreme precision intimated hesitance.

Seduced by Faust, a proud ex-virgin relished her delirium through ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’: ‘Gretchen at the spinning wheel.’ ‘Mein armer Sinn / Ist mir zerstückt’ (‘My poor mind is shattered’) sank like hope in Davidsen’s diminuendo; ‘Ich finde sie nimmer, / Und nimmermehr’ (‘I shall never, ever find peace’) spelt out an entrancing tantrum. Thunder threatened in the accents of ‘An seinen Küssen / Vergehen sollt’!’ (‘May I perish in his kisses!’), stunning with forzando’s deadly strokes.

Nostalgia steered commands in Mignon’s reverie ‘Kennst du das Land?’ (‘Do you know the land?’): the dancer’s invitation to a young man saving her from taunting acrobats in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Envisaging her birthplace – an Italian coastline where the ‘oranges grow golden by dark leaves’ – she cried ‘Dahin! Dahin / Möcht’ ich mit dir, o mein / Geliebter, ziehn’ (‘I long to go there with you, my love’) through Davidsen’s exquisite tones. Amid piano chords’ devoted outpour the soprano shaped Mignon’s sweet epithet of ‘mein Beschützer’ with intrepid preciousness. Hypnosis stoked the girl.

Humility encumbered her next song, ‘Heiss mich nicht reden’: ‘Bid me not speak.’ Mignon has promised to conceal abuse afflicted on her by the troupe. In Davidsen’s solemnity ‘heiss mich schweigen’ (‘let me be silent’) finished in the shame of a diminuendo; the melismas in ‘das Schicksal will es nicht’ (‘Fate does not want it’) echoed doom.

Escape from consciousness ensconced piano chords in eerie dreaminess to open ‘Nun wer die Sehnsucht kennt’ (‘Only he who knows longing’). Mignon’s undoing hushed the tremulous reflection ‘was ich leide’ (‘what I suffer’) with a deferential diffidence. In Davidsen’s last iteration of the phrase a pining pitch implied her peril.

‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’ (‘Death and the Maiden’) led the vocalist to incarnate two foes: a nubile woman desperate to preserve her life and leering Death. While anguish rang in terrified vibrato through the first, the second guided with imperialism. ‘Gib deine Hand, du schön und zart Gebild!’ (‘Give me your hand, you lovely, tender creature!’) ordered Davidsen’s contralto range: the bastion of a bass. Deictic was this deity descended from the devil: a beguiling healer.

Palpitations scintillated in piano chords unravelling ‘Der Musensohn,’ (‘Son of the muses’). Galloping through ‘Feld und Wald’ (‘fields and woods’), they offered trying tempi and high pitches that occasionally tripped up the soprano.

Reminiscence tinged the brisk chords of ‘Suleika I’: a poem penned by Goethe’s muse, the married Marianne von Willemer. Elation slaked a thirst for nature’s nourishment as the narrator sang of the East Wind’s wings ‘cool-[ing] the deep wound in [her] heart.’ Imparting grandeur to its magic, Davidsen adapted this idyll to operatic rapture. ‘Kühlt auch mir die heissen Wangen’ (‘and [the East wind] also cools my burning cheeks’) was doused with forte; ‘Von dem Freunde tausend Grüsse’ (‘a thousand greetings from my friend’) missed tenderness.

Euphoria’s phosphorescence soared in pristine pitches of ‘Du bist die Ruh’: Schubert’s renowned ‘You are repose.’ As the piano’s figures of appoggiatura trickled like the tips of whitecaps, Davidsen envisioned her love’s heart being ‘filled with joy’ (‘Von deiner Lust’). Proclamatory tremolos accompanied the entrance of ‘Die Allmacht,’ a religious panegyric whose peak notes she wielded like a pilgrim on a mission.

Creeping chords across a double bass clef, Baillieu imitated stirrings of a house disturbed by thunder in ‘Die junge Nonne’ (‘The young nun’), which told of ‘rafters groaning.’ Diminuendo in ‘zittert das Haus’ (‘the house quakes’) roused consuming fear in Davidsen’s embodiment. ‘And the night is dark as the tomb’ (‘Und finster die Nacht, wie / das Grab!’) portended doubt but the resplendent high F in ‘getraut’ (‘wedded’) renewed her vow.

Blind faith betrayed a boy in Schubert’s setting of ‘Erlkönig’, another Goethe poem. As he caught sight of the grim reaper, the unwitting son fell victim to deception. Father warned against the sirens lullabying him to sleep to no avail: the child was taken. Through alarming notes of torment Davidsen performed this dialogue with rising tension but selective notes careened off pitch.

Dreams teetered in ‘Am Tage aller Seelen’ (‘On the day of All Souls’), dropping off in the diminuendo of ‘Die vollendet süssen Traum’ (‘those whose sweet dreams are over’). With performances of ‘An die Musik’ and ‘Naturgenuss’ as encores, Davidsen regaled a dark anthology with hopeful ardour.

Awe enthralled this nearly flawless Schubert spree. By steeping pieces into Sturm und Drang, soprano Lise Davidsen ensorcelled listeners. Experimental spells put lieder to the test, however – sometimes skipping intimacy.