| The Schubertiade festival has ended in the Austrian countryside The list of names presented at a particular music festival is always important, but does not always guarantee success. No less important is the setting in which musical events are presented. It's nice to listen to music while sitting on the shore of a lake (Bregenz, Austria), in an ancient abbey (Ambronais, France) or in a tiny baroque theater (Drottingholm, Sweden). But the Schubertiades, held in the small Austrian village of Schwarzenberg, surpassed, perhaps, everyone.
Schwarzenberg is picturesquely lost in the Austrian Alps, in the Bregenzerwald. Around are the same villages with fancy names - Au, Egg, Bitzau and Bezau (if you mix up one letter, you will end up in the wrong place). Three streets run in different directions from the old Schwarzenberg church - one leads to the Angelika Kaufmann Hall, named after the famous Austrian artist (the Schubertiads are held here), the other two lead to nowhere. For four weeks a year, Schwarzenberg is filled with music, making the enchanting landscapes and gastronomic delicacies of the Bregenzerwald fade into the background. In the evenings after concerts in restaurants there is a chance to witness a heated discussion - how melancholic countertenor David Daniels suits his extreme partners from the Europa Galante orchestra, how good the enchantress Cecilia Bartoli is when she sings Mozart and Schubert, etc. Before you publicly express your opinion, you should look around - the one you are talking about may be sitting at the next table. However, you meet the stars six times a day - the tiny scale of Schwarzenberg makes the atmosphere of the festival very homely, devoid of the capital's bustle and arrogance.
The beauty of the landscape not only puts you in the appropriate mood, but also forces you to reconsider your attitude towards romantic art: the texts of Goethe, Heine and Relshtab, praising the virgin beauty of nature, the songs of Schubert and Brahms, which until recently seemed so ephemeral, find visible embodiment in local landscapes. The fairy tale is so real that, returning on a dark night along a foggy road, by God, you can believe in the undines and the Forest King.
One of the initiators of the creation of the Schubertiad 26 years ago was the famous German baritone Hermann Prey. The professional bar for the participants was immediately set very high, and for a quarter of a century only the best singers and instrumentalists have been coming to the festival. The list of names surprises even the most experienced music lover. The vast majority of concerts are in the leaderband genre: evenings of chamber vocal lyricism, when the audience listens to only two performers - a singer and a pianist. Despite this, the atmosphere of the festival is devoid of monotony, since each musician brings something individual to the Schubertiades - one evening you listen to Schubert's vocal cycle Winterreise in a superb interpretation by Thomas Quasthoff, the next - two English ladies, Felicity Lott and Anne Murray, bring you a comical show with the famous feline duo in the finale. Chamber music sounds as a counterpoint to the vocals - this year the famous “Fontenay Trio” and the young and unbridled “Hugo Wolf Quartet” appeared at the Schubertiades. But the main focus is on the vocalists. At the festival you can study the history of German Lieder and their interpretation - the older generation, baritone Olaf Baer and tenor Peter Schreyer, prefer a more seasoned, strict style, in which every vocal phrase is meticulously worked out and there is almost no room for external effects. For young stars, a leader band is akin to a small one-man show, where vocal and acting skills are fused together. Sometimes an individual interpretation turns into a challenge to traditions - another Schubert cycle, “The Beautiful Miller's Wife,” sounded almost like an operatic monologue in the mouth of the young German Rainer Trost. His compatriot tenor Christophe Prégardien, a singer whom one would like to call a philosopher, treated Schubert more carefully and with restraint. But perhaps the strongest impression was left by the Englishman Ian Bostridge. The combination of perfect vocals, beauty of timbre (this is very rare for a tenor) and an unusually strong personality that magnetically attracts the listener turned out to be stronger than a spiritualistic seance.
As you know, good singers of the rank of Bostridge and Bartoli need to be paid well. The Schubertiades somehow incomprehensibly manage to avoid the financial problems that torment their competitors (the festival exists on honestly earned money - profits from tickets plus a minimal amount of private subsidies), and after a quarter of a century it religiously adheres to its artistic policy, with all its in appearance rebelling against reforms and innovations. Even the harshest critic has nothing to wish for the Schubertiad except that this mountain idyll with music and landscapes does not disappear. Schwarzenberg - Moscow |
|
