There's a nugget of received wisdom that holds that composers should steer clear of first-rate verse. It's nonsense, of course, and never more apparently so than when one listens to Schumann's Heine settings, the greatest of which – arguably – is the Dichterliebe cycle.
Mark Padmore and Andrew West judged the Dichterliebe to perfection in the performance that completed their Aldeburgh festival recital. Padmore was fully alive to the subtleties of Schumann's word-painting without over-egging anything, giving precedence to the line and using his naturally melancholic tone colour to advantage. West steered the piano part through its various lyrical and ironic modes excellently, his handling of the final postlude – which reprises the refrain of Am Leuchtenden Sommermorgen, giving the lie to the poet's avowed intention to bury his verse and longing – particularly well judged.
The first half began with Britten's six Hölderlin Fragments and ended with Harrison Birtwistle and David Harsent's new collaboration, a set of 10 lieder entitled Songs from the Same Earth, jointly commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Britten-Pears Trust. Both sets reflect Schumann in placing the vocal line within the folds of the piano part, Padmore and West in particular working wonders with Britten's Sokrates und Alcibiades, the most poignant of the Hölderlin settings.
On first hearing, the Birtwistle and Harsent set doesn't suffer by comparison with the earlier masterpieces; on the contrary, it builds on both in various ways. The pair's common fascination with the melancholic snapshot, and the use of natural images to build complex narratives of longing and loss strikingly similar to Schumann and Heine's, is beautifully born out in Birtwistle's tightly controlled and stylistically cohesive material. Well served by Padmore and West, the cycle served a powerful reminder as to how art song, at its best, can provide both poet and composer with their highest calling.
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