The Song Recital

The song recital is dead! Dead? Long live the song recital! Far-fetched? What happened to the time when a Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau could fill the Erkel Theatre auditorium with a programme of Hugo Wolf? (Okay, admittedly a not unknown pianist by the name of Sviatoslav Richter accompanied him.) If you have the fortune to remember the concerts of 30-40-50 years ago, you'd recall that it was at song recitals, in the Liszt Academy's Grand Hall for the most part, where such icons such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf took their final bow. And by the same token, stars of the future such as Elena Obraztsova were emerging. 

The song recital was a typical genre of the middle classes. In his inexhaustible book about 19th century music, Carl Dahlhaus emphasised that the opera aria was in truth a "role poem" in which the composer "remains hidden" from the audience. By contrast, in the Lied it is the composer himself speaking, perhaps not stripped bare but presenting himself as a "lyrical ego." This differs from sung narratives such as the ballad: the Lied is not directed conspicuously towards the audience; the public just "listens along" to it. As Dahlhaus emphasises: while listeners are a prerequisite for a ballad, the audience for a lieder is "accidental", or random. Obviously this is also connected with the fact that the lieder recital – as one of the most intimate of concert genres – has been confined to chamber halls by concert organisers for nearly a hundred years.   

Song recital of Izabella Simon and Judit Németh in the Solti Hall (18.12.2013) Photo: Liszt Academy / Sándor Benkő

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, because the notion of "someone singing while others listen silently" has a long history. In middle-class houses, music-making meant people singing together, an activity for the enjoyment of the participants rather than the cultivation of an audience. One of the principal ateliers of the German language Lied, the "Berlin school", stated as its ideal the composition of simple folk-like strophic songs. It was noted of one of the most important representatives of this trend, Johann Friedrich Reichard, that in the 1780s he was the first to perform his works before an exclusive audience who devoted rapt attention to him. And although the songs were strophic, certain performing instructions or rhythmic figures of the text nonetheless bear witness to the composer relying on singers with a gift for improvisation rather than communal singing. But even the songs of Schubert were sung at Schubertiades, private gatherings in Vienna. The partially public concerts of the Friends of Music Society – among them the 1821 "Abendunterhaltung" at which Erlkönig was performed – were still the exception. So the song only obtained its civil rights in concert life after the "king of song" had passed away. It was only when his output of about six hundred songs was complete, during the period Schumann was writing his great song cycles, that a few singers emerged who would perform songs in the concert hall. Julius Stockhausen was one of the most famous of these pioneers; he was the first in the mid-19th century who performed such complete song cycles as Die Schöne Müllerin, Winterreise or Dichterliebe on the concert podium. At his Schubert recitals, Stockhausen read out verses that the composer had not set to music, putting the song in its original literary context, better illuminating the meaning of each song (this solution for example could be used by concert organisers today.)  

 Certainly, song recitals were initially a rarity, since in those days the fashion was for mixed programmes: chamber works alternating with songs, while at orchestral concerts, overtures, symphonies and concertos were interspersed with operatic arias or (orchestrated) songs. Frequently, only the most popular songs from a cycle were heard, often quite removed from their original context. In Vienna by the 1870s, primarily thanks to the Schubert recitals of Gustav Walter, the independent song recital achieved an equal footing with other types of concert, and in the 1880s it grew into one of the most favoured concert genres. By the first decade of the 20th century, the lieder recital had become so widespread in Europe (including Hungary) that in Berlin, for example, there were 20 lieder recitals in a week and each one attracted a full house!   

With the decline of the bourgeois era, and the snuffing out of the flame of romanticism, song recitals lost much of their popularity. Is it possible to resurrect them? Can the intimacy of bourgeois salons be created amid the modern grind of concert life? One way to stimulate interest in song recitals is to expand and extend the repertoire (beyond the German language), exploring the song literature of other nations, which is often deserving of rediscovery. The juxtaposition of known works with unknown, the clashing of song compositions of earlier times with more recent compositions, the demonstration of literary and cultural historical relationships, and, not least, the precise subtitling of rough translations of song texts could also facilitate a renaissance of the song recital.  

The song recital is the cheapest form of concert. Nothing more is needed than a piano, a pianist and a singer. Of course, it doesn't hurt if the instrument is well tuned, nor is it a disadvantage if the pianist is a Richter and the singer a Fischer-Dieskau. It's enough that your performers approach these masterpieces with their sophistication. Because, as Dieskau wrote in his beautiful book about the world of singing: "Vocal music is the most enlightened feeling, it is will become unambiguous, commemoration, preservation, further continuation, although in no way is it a concrete thing. Song reminds us of indestructible inter-human values. From this perspective, Schubert's Winterreise is the greatest challenge a singer can face. The emotional power and the profound sense of there being no escape permeates Wilhelm Müller's verses – even if they are not great creations of poetry – just as they saturate Schubert's music."