Beauty, Subtlety & Near Abandon --Anne Sofie von Otter in HK

Autumn is good. Autumn with songs is even better. It's such a wonderful experience to be able to escape from the humid heat of Hong Kong once a year and be regaled with the beautiful and relaxing sound which flew in half a globe away from Sweden to find a temporary wooden perch on the stage of the Cultural Centre. I had such an experience last night.

The experience was delivered by a golden bird from the land where the sun seldom rises above the horizon and never sets for months on end at different times of the year. She sauntered on to the stage in a long slim purple glistening velvet evening dress, her short blonde hair above her bare shoulders, a radiant smile on her face, followed closely behind her by a rather plump gentleman with thinning hair in big curls on a ball-like head and a loosely fitting dark suit on a white shirt without wings , with an equally charming but slightly impish smile on his face. They were opposites in every way except in their good humor. The golden "nightingale "was mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and the plump dark "gander" her piano accompanist Bengt Forsberg, accomplished musicians both, each in their own way.

They started the evening's programme with songs from a composer from their neighboring country Norway: Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), who trained in Leipzig, Germany, moved back to Norway, then Denmark, finally back to his own country and went on to become one of his country's greatest composers: Med en vandilje (With a Water Lily), Våren (Spring) and Lauf der Welt (The Way of the World) based on three of the six beautiful poems by one of the most famous Norwegian playwrights and poets Henrik Ibsen. The first one is about a mother's warning to her daughter about how behind the beauty of water lily in a quiet little spring stream. there may lurk hidden dangers in in the form of dreams of love that it triggers. The second sings of flowers budding again, ice melting into gurgling streams, the voices of one's forefathers' souls speaking  through dancing spring flowers and the riddles hidden amidst the birches and evergreens of its wood and the weeping voices of carved flutes. The third sings of the wordless language of love ,spoken each evening along a meadow lane, by the lips of young lovers which begins and ends naturally amidst gentle breezes through some rose bushes until they are embraced by the morning dew without anyone of them ever saying, "I do love thee". The first is a bit sad but you can feel the joy in the second and the third, although they're all sung in Norwegian.

Next we had songs from another country in the land of steep mountains, endless snow and coniferous evergreens: Finland. We had three songs from Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), who trained in Helsinki, Berlin and Vienna and who wrote 7 symphonies and more than a hundred songs. The first was Till kvällen (To Evening), based on a poem by the Finnish poet Forsman-Koskimies about how a man yearns for the coming of the evening, to wrap him in the tresses of its starlit splendour, silent, yet warm and tender and to take him to the land of dreams, free from the clamor, the cares and the burdens of the nitty gritty of daily living and to rest forever in its embrace. The second was Les Troi soeurs aveugles (The Three Blind Sisters), a song from Maeterlinnck's Pelléas et Mélisande for which Sibelius wrote the programme music for its staging in Swedish translation in 1905, sung by the mysterious Mélisande from her tower window, as Pelléas, her lover, the half-brother of her husband Golaud, comes to her. The Three Blind Sisters are about three different views on achieving union with man or God through love, the first held on to hope and  the second to the light from an ascending King but the third, the chastest says that "Our lights have gone out". It's a very sad song. The third song, Var det en dröm (Was it a Dream?), was a song of lost love, of memories of a silent, shy and tender glance, a rose given  him by his lover, a glistening parting tear and the residual vibration of the strings from a song which has become silent and as evanescent as the life of an anemone out in the spring meadow whose beauty is quickly overshadowed by the profusion of other new flowers, leaving behind only the the occasional sounds of sobs hidden deep within her breast.

Before the next composer was introduced. we had a piano solo by Forsberg, who played for us Sibelius's Romance in A. Opus 24. No. 2, a piano piece which aspired to be orchestral in its range, its dynamics and its idioms. It was a very romantic piece, full of strain, contrasts, color and to me, joy. Forsberg is good. He appears to thoroughly enjoy what he is doing, playing with a certain nonchalance and a certain spontaneity which you do not always find in other pianists. He would certainly have made an excellent jazz pianist, had he not been playing classical music.

Then we had a most famous piece which had been adapted for solo piano and for choirs. It was Schubert's (1797-1828) Die Forelle (The Trout), which is based on part of a poem by Christian Friedrich Schubert about how a trout would race through a clear brook, secure from the angler's hook but once the water was befouled by the angler's "crafty agitations" , it got caught and the song ended with a warning to young girls never to lose their head. I like the way Otter sang this song. She caught the irrepressible joy hidden amongst the musical notes and the first part of the lyrics, which matched so closely the lively motions of the trout splashing and jumping upstream in the clear water. Next we had Du bist die Ruh (You are my Rest), a song based on a poem by Friedrich Rückert. written in a poem collected in Ostliche Rosen (Oriental Roses). It's about the poet's longing for the tender peace of mind which would relieve him from both the more ordinary pleasures and pains of life so that it may rest in the more calming pleasures of its tranquility and silence. The final piece from Schubert was based upon the first part of Goethe's. Faust. Gretchen am Spinnade (Gretchan at the Spinning Wheel), It's about how the movement of her thoughts and her feelings: how restless she has become after having fallen in love with the young Faust, how her heart has been turned into a  silent grave in his absence, how angry she got, how her heart messes up her head, looking out at the window all the time for him, how the sound of his voice, the touch of his hands and his kisses are to her streams of pure bliss, how she yearns to feel him close against her breasts, to clasp him, to kiss him until she sinks and dies as she spins. We hear the steady rhythm of the spinning wheel as she sings. 

After the intermission, we had songs from that whimsical genius Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Es muss ein Wunderbares sein (It must be a wonderful thing), Es war ein König in Thule (The King in Thule) and Die drei Ziegeuner (The three Gypsies). The first was based on a short poem about love written by Oscar Freiheir von Redwitz for Princess Augusta of Prussia, the sister of the Grand Duke of Weimar., about how two people locked in love would share their most intimate secrets, joys and griefs together from their first kiss to their death. The second is also based on Goethe's Faust and is also sung by Gretchen about how the King of Thule who was given a golden goblet by his beloved at the hour of her death , would drink from it at every feast when his eyes overflowed with tears, how before he himself died, he took one last draught of "life's fire" with his knights surrounding him, then tossed it into the sea after which he drank not a further drop until his eyes sank and he closed his eyes upon the world forever. It sounded almost like a hymn. The Three Gypsies, based upon a poem by Lenau written in 1860, is about how the poet met three gypsies who suggested to him three different ways of handling troubles. The first is a fiddler whom he found lying below a willow tree, as his cart crawled over a sandy heath, playing a merry tune in the glow of sunset, the second blew smoke from his pipes and watched it as if he had not a care in the world and the third simply slept and dreamt  his cymbalom hanging from the tree. Their clothes were full of holes and colorful patches, as if there to mock the world, teaching the poet how when life grew dark, one can always smoke, or sleep or play music.

Then it was the turn of Mahler. We had four of his songs: Es sungen drei Engel (There sang three angels), Das irdische Leben (Earthly Life) Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen (Where the Beautiful Trumpets blow) and Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen (To Make Naughty Children Behave). These four songs were taken from the German folk song collection called Das Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn), assembled, edited and published between 1805-1808 which Mahler adapted in the 1890s. The first, Es sungen drei Engel was composed by him originally as the fifth movement of his Symphony No. 3. It is about three angels singing happily for St. Peter when Jesus asked his 12 apostles at the last supper why they should be so sad for having broken the 10 commandment and told them to fall on their knees to pray to God and to love God at all times, whereupon the song resumes it joyful mood. The next song was much sadder. It was a song about a conversation between a mother and a hungry child. The child asked the mother for a little bread but the mother asked the child to wait because she got to sow the seeds first and when the corn is sown, the child asked for bread again but was told that the harvest would be done the next day. After the harvest, the child asked again but was told that the corn will be threshed quickly, then that it would be ground, then baked but by the time the bread was baked, the child was dead. The song about the trumpet boy is a love song between a young maiden and her lover who will go live in a battle zone where the beautiful trumpet will blow. He waited for her outside her door at dawn, she led him in with her dainty white hands of snow and he begged her not to weep because he would marry her next year but in the meantime, he would have to go to war. The last Mahler song is about a mother who peeps out of her window to find a gentleman on a beautiful horse, tells him that her husband is not around and that she is left alone only with her maid and her children. The gentleman says he's got many presents for obedient children but is told that her children are very naughty so he rides off far far away from the castle. It's a very lively song.

The second last composer introduced was Erich Wolfgang Konrgold (1897-1957). We had three of his songs from Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night from the clown who sang "Come Away, Death" and "O Mistress Mine" and "Adieu, Good Man Devil" later in the play. Duke Orsino fell madly in love with Olivia, then in mourning for her brother and so the clown sings "Come away death" asking to be laid in sad cypress because, he has been slain by a fair cruel maid, where sad true lovers never  find his grave, In the song "O Mistress Mine," he sings to plead with his beloved to stay and kiss him because "present mirth have present laughter" but "what's to come is unsure"  and there's little in delay because youth is not something which endures. In the last song, Molvolio, Olivia's steward has been tricked into professing his love for her, causing him to be ridiculed as a mad man, including the clown, who first posed as the parson and then later later leaves as himself, singing "Adieu,  Good Man Devil" promising to return later. The final song Glückwunsch (Greetings) was taken from a film called "Devotion" for which Korngold wrote the film score and is based on a poem written by Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel. It's a happy well wishing song in which the singer wishes someone happiness which is more than vain delight, wishing him gazes free from longing, full of the kind of strength that makes spring out of winter and for a bouquet that glow in his house each day.

The evening's official programme ended with three Broadway songs from jazz composer Kurt Weill: "One Life to Live", taken from a 1940 musical "Lady in the Dark" and two other jazz favourites  "Speak Low" and "I"m a Stranger here myself". both from another musical called "A Touch of Venus" The first song is sung at the first dream sequence of the play, called "Glamor Dream" by the heroine Liza Elliot, an editor of a lady's fashion magazine then undergoing psychotherapy, a kind of spoof on the Pygmallion story of a girl who rose from the gutter to glamor . In the first song, the heroine says since there is only one life, if there is party, she wants to be its host, if there is a haunted house, she wants to be its ghost and if there's a town, she wants to be its toast, and wants her imagination to soar because she thinks that what she collects at the grindstone may become in time a millstone and that she doesn't mind being called an escapist but just wants to be led straight to the bar and laugh at her old repression. The next song "Speak Low" is a bit sad. It's about the fleetingness of time when one is in love: the summer day withers away too soon, and lovers are swept away too soon, and love's spark too, is lost in the dark too soon because time is a thief and the curtain may fall down too soon. In the last song, "I'm A Stranger here myself", she asks whether murmuring she loves him embarrasses him,  whether she has gone astray in doing so, whether love is now outmoded, whether true romance is fleshly, whether love has lost its glamor, why the Victorian views and complains that she is a stranger to herself. Otter was happy. She gave us two encores, a little "Swedish?" song on summer and then "Autumn leaves". She is an excellent singer, sensitive to the nuances of the various kinds of feelings she must convey in her songs and sings with obvious enthusiasm but I think her voice is more suitable for studio production or some rather more intimate singing venues like cabarets , chamber music environment because much of her talent for subtlety may get dissipated in the vast space of a concert hall, unless of course, she does not mind the horror of a good mike.  I know she tries very hard to sing with the abandon of a black female voice in the last part of the programme but nature is nature.   

. .