Winterreise, Mark Padmore/Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall - review

An odd choice for a Valentine's Day recital, you may think, but a packed Wigmore Hall was happy to forego red roses and chocolates in order to follow tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Paul Lewis as they trudged - the word describes the emotional trajectory, not the musical performance - through Schubert's tear-stained musical landscape.

This is a partnership of equals. In effect, Lewis's piano provided the cues, both harmonic and spiritual, for Padmore, establishing his moods, completing his thoughts, occasionally offering an escape route, even if it eventually proved illusory.

Still, Winterreise is about the voice, not the piano. At first Padmore sounded relaxed, as if engaged in a casual conversation; his voice is naturally light and open at the top but its depths are turbulent. Schubert demands that his soloist be imploring, defiant, despairing, exhausted, and much more besides. Padmore proved able to vary the charge in a moment, as on the climactic word "house" in the song Flood, in the process engendering a real feeling that every moment of hope grasped by the protagonist was immediately snatched away.

To convey that purely in the tone, pitch and weight of the voice is no small achievement. If at times it seemed that volume and pathos were being shifted at the flick of a switch, the feeling quickly passed as Padmore and Lewis plunged us deeper into the mire.

When Padmore confronted the hurdy-gurdy man in the final song, and Lewis tapped out his insidiously simple tune, the entire hall seemed suspended in an eerie collective hallucination.

Winterreise, Mark Padmore/Paul Lewis
Wigmore Hall
36 Wigmore Street
W1U 2BP