More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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30 September
As one might expect, Barron's dramatic work or for the stage informed her approach this evening (at 5.00 p.m.), but not perhaps, given that she is mentored by Barbara Hannigan and working with Ian Bostridge, any more than befitted the audience or occasion.
In such a lovely, but relatively small, performance-space [The Marble Hall at Hatfield House], one simply could not give a performance that was audaciously writ large – unlike The Maltings, at Snape, where Bostridge let rip one summer at Aldeburgh Festival [reviewed by #UCFF as 'A swaying, snarling, even spitting Schubert for our times'] ! – and large gestures were unnecessary, when small ones (such as, early on, fluttering eye-lids) worked in this context much better, alongside the usual recital-room process of clearly and visually thinking her way to, and into, the next Lied.
Even if partly filled in by Müller in Die schöne Müllerin (?), he is anyway handling the universals of love, life and their loss, so there is no need for him or us to delay on the particulars – and those, similarly, who still remark that they are hearing a mezzo-soprano perform Winterreise are perhaps missing the point of its universality, and that there is no good reason why any character of voice cannot inhabit these texts* (or they the singer ?).
The texts speak to us, from and through the performers, of things that extend far beyond any literal scenario outlined, and, excepting, perhaps, the strangely placid encounter (or non-encounter [as of Beckettt's Murphy with Mr Endon] ?) with the vision that ends the cycle (and the eerie scoring that might as effectively have launched Pierrot lunaire from Earth), who cannot relate to the narrator's awareness of how perspectives can be curiously mixed and changed by time, as recalled in 'Der Lindenbaum' or, say, 'Die Post' ?
On half-a-dozen occasions (in live concerts alone), it appears that one can have followed the poems that make up Winterreise and seemingly not have noticed before that – except in three cases ('Die Post' [no. 13], 'Täuschung' [19] and 'Die Nebensonnen' [23]) – they compromise some number, between 8 and 3, four-line stanzas. However, one palpable reason not to be aware (other than that each poem is headed by a title) is that substance far outweighs form in this Liederkreis, and this is not La divina commedia's intense terza rima, or equivalent to a sonnet-sequence (such as Sidney's Astrophel and Stella).
Winterreise is far more condensed, so, with its many different scenes (those titles, again), let alone changes of heart or direction of thought, its progression is at a different scale, and of a different scope, from Shakespeare's sonnets or those of Sidney (though some have disputed that the former appear in the correct order) : there can be (in fact, need to be) such changes, but the formality and requirements of fourteen lines, even if they are constituted as three quatrains, is then affected by leading up to ending with a couplet. (Or there may be, say, a differently structured division, with a rhyme-scheme for the first eight lines, and another for the final six.)
[...]
Ich bin zu Ende mit allen Träumen*
[...]
One emotional centre that Fleur Barron found and gave to us in this series of pieces was in 'Im Dorfe', from which the words that head this review are quoted*, and these words, in particular, threw into retrospect other times when dreaming and dreams had occurred in the texts of Wilhelm Müller's poems :
Seven poems away from the seeming inevitability of 'Der Leiermann', and after the narratorial voice has already passed through – and given us insights into – such moments as something heartfelt, resolution, noble feeling, moodi- and vengefulness, pride, and despairing***, its experiences seem to have come to one definite conclusion, from which the remaining poems will not deviate – although of course, and not least in 'Der Leiermann', there are more realizations, dreads and existential horrors to come.
[...]
End-notes :
* Maybe we cannot easily forget Dylan Thomas, reading his own work, once heard, but he is not the only one who can or should be heard, reading it aloud.
** #UCFF would render this I'm through with all these dreams. (As perhaps too prosaically translated as 'I am finished with all dreams' in the English version, by Richard Wigmore, provided ?)
*** To capture ones just from the first four poems ('Gute Nacht', 'Die Wetterfahne', 'Gefrorne Tränen' and 'Erstarrung').
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
