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Festival de Valloires 2008:  Argoules, Picardie, France, 8-13th August 2008 (ME)

Schubert, Schwanengesang: Florian Boesch  (baritone)  Julius Drake (piano)
Mozart, Ligeti, Schubert: Paul Lewis (piano)
Schubert, Winterreise: Mark Padmore (tenor)  Imogen Cooper (piano)

Now that the excitement of the new London season openings has passed, and we’ve all settled into our routines, it’s the perfect time to enter a few dates in your crisp new 2009 diary – I recommend August 7^th-12^th, the week of the fourth Festival de Valloires in Northern France: I previewed this year’s Festival a couple of months ago HERE and it more than lived up to expectations – if these concerts are anything to go by, you are assured of a wonderful time in August 2009. Think a cross between the Wigmore Hall, the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade and Salzburg, in equally stupendous surroundings but with far less formality of atmosphere. True, there is Champagne and canapés before concerts and at the interval, but the quaffers and nibblers are dressed in anything from Primark to Prada, and the chatter, mainly in English or French but with a smattering of Dutch and Flemish, is mainly of excursions enjoyed and recitals looked forward to, rather than which high-profile Festival to move on to next.

The evening concert on Sunday 9^th was to have been given by Ian Bostridge, but he cancelled and was replaced by Florian Boesch, whom the Festival Director, Adam Gatehouse, in a delightful introduction, averred was ‘at the top of his list’ for  when ‘one of those dreaded ‘phone calls comes.’ This was my first experience of this singer, and I have to say that on this showing he would not be on my list – but how far one can truly judge an artist under such circumstances is a tricky question. Boesch might be called the ‘Not Gerhaher’ of baritones – that is, where Gerhaher is mellifluous he is dramatically jagged, and where Gerhaher is fairly passive he is at times annoyingly active. He certainly throws himself into the music and gives it his all, sometimes to the detriment of the line, but you cannot fault his commitment to the songs.

The programme offered an intriguing version of the order of the songs, with the ‘lighter’ and ‘heavier’ ones sung as distinct groups. In general, Boesch tends to sing Rellstab as though he is Heine – there are obvious links, of course, but surely the Rellstab songs convey the message ‘I’m in love’ and the Heine, ‘I’m in love, and I want to die!’ This is a very active interpretation of the songs, complete with gestures and much winking at ladies, but does it do much for Schubert? Personally I would rather take my chances with ‘dem wilden Meer’ than put my head anywhere near this speaker’s shoulder, but at least it was dramatically convincing! He is at his best in the more anguished songs, where despite some intonation problems he rises to the occasion, especially in ‘Das Meer’ and ‘Ihr Bild.’ In the latter he produced a lovely legato line at ‘Und das geliebte Antlitz, / Heimlich zu leben begann’ although I would have liked to have felt a little more of the importance of ‘Heimlich.’ ‘Die Taubenpost’ was given as an encore – Boesch sees this as a light-hearted song, with that little appoggiatura lean on ‘die Sehnsucht’ more of a quip than a tender evocation of what Graham Johnson calls ‘the most touching setting of this key word in the entire song repertoire.’ Needless to say, Julius Drake’s playing was a constant source of joy.

My next concert was the highlight of the Festival, and indeed of my summer musical experiences – Paul Lewis gave a performance of Schubert’s G major Piano Sonata of such intensity, sensitivity and sheer brilliance that I cannot recall any other to match it. It was once said of Schubert that his playing revealed ‘A beautiful touch, a steady hand, clear and clean playing full of spirit and feeling’ and this lovely definition holds equally true for Paul Lewis. He began the evening with a cleverly conceived trio of works – Mozart’s C minor Fantasia, with its daring three-octave scale ending, Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata – 11 Pieces for Piano, similar in that it explores the possibilities of the keyboard, and Mozart’s A minor Rondo, audaciously played straight after the Ligeti as if to say that they were almost at one.

The G major Sonata, regarded by Schumann as Schubert’s finest, is full of that ‘rippling, natural movement’ so characteristic of  the composer, the Andante full of song-like phrases and major-minor contrasts and even the Allegretto laden with pensiveness, that so many pianists go for what can only be called a ‘charming’ approach. Lewis rejects this, playing with muscular style and subtle nuance, his touch light but never flippant. As always with this musician, at the moment when you thought you’d got him worked out, some new little grace sprang up – just as with Schubert himself, and the playing of this Sonata went right to the edge of the daring; no gemütlichkeit here, rather a pervading sense of melancholy.

That same sense of daring was evident in the highly individual playing of Imogen Cooper, accompanying Mark Padmore on the following night – indeed, both singer and pianist seemed to me more audacious than I’ve heard them in the past. I have an equivocal relationship with Padmore, musically speaking of course – I read the raves which often greet his performances, and other musicians, even other tenors, assure me that he is ‘the best,’ but despite being bowled over by his ENO St John Evangelist, I have yet to be convinced by his Schubert. There’s plenty of beauty, of course, with that plaintive tone and exact phrasing, and of course it’s abundantly clear that he loves the music with a passion, but to my ears there is still an emptiness at the core: perhaps I can best sum it up by saying that for Padmore, the line ‘Habe ja doch nichts begangen, dass ich Menschen sollte scheu’n’ is not really a question but more of a statement.

There was some fine singing to savour, however, especially in ‘Frühlingstraum’ where ‘Die Augen schliess ich wieder, noch schlägt das Herz so warm’ was rightly central, although lacking the heartbreak in the tone on the word ‘warm’ brought to it by other interpreters. ‘Das Wirtshaus’ was bleak from start to finish, followed by a much less than usually faux-hearty ‘Mut.’ Padmore’s voice is heard at its finest in a song like ‘Die Nebensonnen’ where his rather white tone echoes the despair of the words.

The playing was revelatory – Imogen Cooper seemed to be carrying on the same kind of daring shown by Paul Lewis on the previous night, the nachspiel to ‘Frühlingstraum’ more of a bleak ‘never’ than I’ve heard before, and her vorspiel to ‘der Lindenbaum’ just on that crucial edge between lyrical and bitter – her introduction to ‘Die Krähe’ laden with a sense of foreboding. I have never heard the ‘Leiermann’ play with such a searing, driven quality, nor with so deeply anguished a sound. Maybe it’s something in the air around Argoules, or maybe it’s just that the atmosphere of this Festival encourages artists to push the boundaries – whatever it is, the result is quite wonderful, deeply memorable and a tribute to the organizers and the audience – which, by the way was at near capacity for all three of the performances I attended, so if you want to go next year, don’t wait too long before making your choices!

Melanie Eskenazi

Pictures © Marc Eskenazi

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