When the budding star conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin received an inquiry from the joint agency a few years ago as to whether he could imagine a recital with the world-famous singer Joyce DiDonato, his answer was extremely short: "Wow!" for the head of the New York Metropolitan Opera (since 2018), the Philadelphia Orchestra (since 2012) and artistic director of the Canadian orchestra Métropolitain (since 2000) not yet part of the day-to-day business. When, in 2017, after a performance of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart's "Titus" - DiDonato sang the Sesto here - the two continued to exchange ideas in Baden-Baden, it was the singer who was now speechless: of all things, it was to be Franz Schubert's "Winterreise" So songswhich were as remote from the coloratura mezzo-soprano as ice flowers in summer.
But Nézet-Séguin sweetened his idea with the prospect of a long-term project, because Schubert, the pianist / conductor is convinced, is a door opener for Gustav Mahler. That this cycle contains, in addition to its emotional demands, also a climatic one, depending on the seasonal performance time, the two experienced firsthand at the first rehearsal in the July heat in Kansas, USA, to which Nézet-Séguin was much to the delight of Joyce DiDonato with flip- Flops and a scantily clad torso appeared. But this year everything is completely different anyway, regardless of what is being played, the main thing is that something is performed at all, because one is even grateful for the winter depression during the summer festival in the Baden-Badener Festspielhaus with all the Beethoven symphonies under Nézet-Séguin's direction.In addition, the CD recording was recently released on the Erato (Warner) label, so you can listen to this “winter journey” lonely on cloudy days at any time.
What has become of the "fine love"?
Schubert's original envisages a tenor for the wanderer, but the practice is indeed diverse, from the counter to the bass baritone with the male voices, plus a genre-spanning joy of editing that has become downright popular, starting with Hans Zender's ingenious “composed interpretation” from 1993. And After the pioneer Lotte Lehmann, the female voices have also been on their way again and again, most prominently Christa Ludwig together with James Levine, the predecessor of Nézet-Séguin at the Met (1986), or Brigitte Fassbaender with the composer / pianist Aribert Reimann (2012).
However, Joyce DiDonato does not identify with the hiker.
In the age of feminism, she rather asks speculatively what has become of “her”, the “fine love”: “Does she mourn for him?
Is she mad at him?
Does she still love him? ”We will never find out, and in our inveterate understanding of gender roles, it is mostly women who are abandoned.
A path of suffering whose abysses are transcended by aesthetics
In this respect, the abandoned man in the “Winterreise” has our full sympathy, especially since we recognize that separation pain with all associated hope, despair, longing for death is a human experience, beyond the sexes. DiDonato's intended change of perspective has two consequences for the performance in the concert hall for the beginning and the end of the cycle. Initially an imaginary, theatrical one: while she takes a seat in front of the piano with a music notebook, the surtitle shows the scene instruction: "He sent me his diary by post ..." With increasing inner movement while reading, she is in the fourth song “Frozen”, seized and permeated by the lyrical stream of music, approaches the piano and stands there until the penultimate song “Nebensonnen”, as it were at the end, exhausted.Only after a break does she go back to her little desk for the final “Leiermann”.
Completing a cycle so strangely is a riddle for both performers - the “Leiermann” just didn't fit, admits Nézet-Séguin in an American discussion group. You solve it through another imagination, according to which the “Leiermann” is an ingredient of “hers”, a sequel after reading the diary. Joyce DiDonato is close to tears herself. Certainly from emotional participation, but also because she was able to prove to herself at the place of origin of the idea of “winter travel” that the effort, including an excellent language coach in Vienna, was worth it.
She sings Schubert's songs with all the finesse of her rather bright mezzo, but without operatic pomp, unfolds in the variable tone and above all with her sophisticated dynamics - her subito piano is terrific! -, with central words repeatedly emphasized expressively, a path of suffering whose abysses are transcended by aesthetics. But what would this singer be without the man at the piano? Yannick Nézet-Séguin left the audience speechless: a pianist who can withdraw to the limit of audibility and thus make distance and strangeness the main theme of the cycle - wow!