Review: A Modest But Memorable Return to Armory Recitals


This Armory program was born out of a desire to pair two song cycles, Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte” and Berg’s “Altenberg Lieder” – both of which, as the program notes write, “talk about ways to deal with unfulfilled desires, dreams. it didn’t happen.” To put these loops in context, she performed selected songs by Schumann and Schubert that grapple with loss and pain and offer coping mechanisms, including what Appleby calls “numbed nihilism.”

Both cycles were historically very important. Beethoven’s set of six songs from 1816 provided a template for the 19th-century German song cycle. Alois Jeitteles’ poems present a hero contemplating his lost home, his distant lover, his unrealized love. The songs flow from one to the next, giving the loop a sense of a unified, albeit episodic, narrative. Appleby sang delicate pieces with warmth and heartache, bringing an almost eerie liveliness to dazzling moments of nostalgia. Hanick, a brilliant pianist heard more often thorny contemporary scores, played with clarity, nuance and grace.

Berg’s 1912 work of five short texts by German writer Peter Altenberg was originally written for mezzo-soprano and lush orchestra. When two of the songs were introduced at a concert in Vienna, the public reaction was so hostile that their aggrieved composers never performed them again. But the work pointed the way to a new 20th-century language of music. Appleby and Hanick made a version with piano reduction that allowed the tenor – in a relatively lighter, lyrical voice – to reveal the subtleties of vocal lines. And Hanick’s playing was an expression of clarity and biting.

There were beautiful accounts of all Schubert and Schumann works. I was particularly pleased to hear these artists draw attention to songs that were scarcely heard from Schumann’s later years, such as the dreamy “An den Mond” that opened the wonderful program and the harmonically tart “Abendlied” in the autumn that ended it.

Paul Appleby and Conor Hanick

Repeated Wednesday at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; armyonpark.com.



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