Wigmore Hall is celebrating its 125th anniversary, and director John Gilhooley has been granted honorary membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society. To mark the occasion, everyone in the audience was treated to a free drink on Sunday night. But there was another reason for celebration: the world's most in-demand opera singer, Lise Davidsen, gave an all-Schubert recital that drew a standing-room-only crowd.
A Rolls-Royce Instrument
The Norwegian soprano possesses a voice of extraordinary amplitude, more than capable of filling a house the size of the Metropolitan Opera. Yet, up close at Wigmore Hall, she brought other qualities to the fore. Her disarming warmth in seemingly off-the-cuff spoken introductions put the audience entirely at ease. Her remarkable ability to inhabit a character, as she does on stage, ensured that songs such as Gretchen am Spinnrade and Die Junge Nonne were dramatic highlights. The former opened with a throbbing intensity and built to an eruption of volcanic proportions. Her fledgling nun seethed with a scared rapture that verged on the dangerously corporeal.
Big Beasts and Intimate Gems
The larger works hit their mark, including Ganymed with its sly, priapic crescendo, and a turbulent Erlkönig, taken at an RSI-inducing lick by supportive pianist James Baillieu. Davidsen's voice has a focused core of steel, although when pressed hard in the burgeoning upper register, the odd consonant was inclined to go astray. It was impossible to find fault, however, with Die Allmacht, surely Schubert's most Wagnerian utterance. Nailing her operatic colours to the mast, Davidsen threw caution to the wind and unleashed her inner Valkyrie.
It was the more intimate songs, several of them welcome rarities, that brought the greatest pleasure. Du Bist die Ruh, with an imposing final diminuendo, was a masterclass in breath control. The singer's unassuming honesty tapped hidden depths in Mignon's So Lasst Mich Scheinen. Baillieu, her rock throughout, brought a tender flexibility to Goethe's heart-wrenching Nur Wer die Sehnsucht Kennt. Saving the best until last, the recital concluded with a spellbinding account of the quasi-religious Am Tage Aller Seelen. Davidsen's seamless soprano barely rose above a whisper as the voice dispensed balm to the broken-hearted, every word and emotion crystal clear.
