How many singers have chosen to center their Bay Area recitals around Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe (Poet's love)? Last year, baritones Gerald Finley, Daniel Cilli, and Thomas Hampson, as well as tenor Rolando Villazón, gave this defining cycle of 16 songs a shot. Gazing back as far as 2001, the list is swelled by baritones Wolfgang Holzmair, Matthias Goerne, Christópheren Nomura, Randall Scarlata, Brad Alexander, Wolfgang Brendel, and Jonathan Lemalu, tenor Ian Bostridge, and lyric sopranos Christine Schäfer and Barbara Bonney.
Despite Dichterliebe’s surfeit of heart-stopping utterances, few singers who essay Schumann’s cycle of bitterness, despair, and grief are capable of moving an audience to tears. Some try too hard, some shortchange the essential irony of the “happier” songs, and many cannot encompass the music’s huge vocal demands. (And that’s not even taking into account the essential role of the pianist, whose extended solo conclusions to many of the songs can either make or break a performance).
Mariusz Kwiecien
Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien (pronounced Mah-ryoosh Kvyeh-tchen), who recently stunned San Francisco Opera audiences with a Don Giovanni who leaped between tables, twirled a grown man on his shoulders, and sang with seductive, virile force, now joins the list of Dichterliebe do-hards. In his Cal Performances recital debut on Sunday, Kwiecien’s sound, as heard from the second row of Hertz Hall, was ravishing: huge, splendid, deeply resonant, and capable of a fair amount of color and caressing smoothness. Pianist Howard Watkins was an ideal partner, his accompaniment both poetic and aligned with Kwiecien.
Dressed to Kill
Standing with balletic erectness, and wearing a high-collared, quasi-formal white shirt provocatively opened halfway to the navel, perfectly tailored suit, and million-dollar shoes so pointed that they could make a leprechaun jealous, Kwiecien seemed intent on showing both his audience and the poet’s lover that before them was a man telling it like it is. Often singing with tremendous force, Kwiecien’s performance brought to mind what Charles Ives supposedly said to a fellow audience member who booed a piece by Charles Ruggles at a concert: "Stop being such a God-damned sissy! Why can't you stand up before fine strong music like this and use your ears like a man?"
Well, I tried. But beyond the extraordinary sound of the voice, the performance only touched me intermittently, above all in the 10th song, Hör’ ich das liedchen klingen (When I hear the song). Here, the combination of gorgeous, soft tone and Watkins’ beautifully judged postlude created, to these ears, the one transcendent moment of the cycle. Occasionally there were downright disappointments, as when Kwiecien skipped the high climax of perhaps the most vocally challenging song, “Ich grolle nicht” (I bear no grudge).
Most of the time, it was impossible to listen to the music without thinking about Kwiecien himself. For me, his performance was a case of singing about burying love and sorrow in a coffin while refusing to bury the ego for more than three minutes at a time. Perhaps this says more about my ego than Kwiecien’s, but my sense of the audience is that many of us appreciated this Dichterliebe from afar.
After intermission, Kwiecien began the first of three songs, Blagoslavlyayu vas, lesa (I bless you, forests) by Tchaikovsky, with a sound so deeply masculine as to call to mind the fabled Russian bass-baritones of old. After its extremely impassioned ending, he rendered the frequently performed Net, tol’ko tot, kto znal (No, only one who knows) with tone so gorgeous as to make the song sound fresh. The final Serenada Don Juana gave Kwiecien permission to finally release his inner Don. Curling his lip, hammering fist into hand, the Juan who had been there all along, crying for release, finally had a chance to fully strut his stuff.
On a High Note
Kwiecien began five songs by his countryman, Mieczyslaw Karlowicz, with heavingly dark, masculine tone. The third song, Pamietam, ciche, jasne, zlote dnie (I remember those quiet, bright, golden days), sung in expressively soft voice, was capped by a long-held, high falsetto note whose beauty might have made falsetto master Richard Tauber jealous. The set ended in a loving, lyrical vein with Najpiekniejsze piosnki (That girl taught me all those beautiful songs).
Time to channel Don Juan again, this time via Ravel’s final song cycle, Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (Don Quixote to Dulcinea). Although this music is commonly associated with lighter, quintessentially French baritones, it was actually written (in 1932-33) for the great Russian bass-baritone Feodor Chaliapin. Some commentators suggest that Ravel intentionally began the songs in a low-key manner to discourage the larger-than-life Chaliapin from hamming it up too much. That didn’t stop Kwiecien from hurling the first of the three songs far beyond the back wall. The final drinking song allowed him to loosen up, lean on the piano, curl his lips even more, gesticulate as if possessed, and Do the Don for all he was worth.
After a gorgeously voiced encore of Richard Strauss’ Zueignung (Dedication), Kwiecien bade us ado with — you guessed it — Mozart's Don Giovanni, delivering the “Fin ch’han dal vino” (Finally, with the wine) of one’s dreams. Diction perfect, every gesture masterful, sounds piercing the air like swords, this do-or-die Don brought the audience to its feet.
Jason Victor Serinus regularly reviews music and audio for Stereophile, SFCV, Classical Voice North America, AudioStream, American Record Guide, and other publications. The whistling voice of Woodstock in She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, the longtime Oakland resident now resides in Port Townsend, Washington.
