Soprano Linda Poetschke
In 25th anniversary recital, the naked truth
October 19, 2009It is commonly supposed that singers sing with their voices. That is not entirely true. Ordinary singers sing with their voices. Great singers sing with their lives.
That realization came to me fairly early in soprano Linda Poetschke’s recital, Oct. 17, marking her 25th anniversary of teaching at The University of Texas at San Antonio. The event drew a throng to the recital hall at the UTSA suburban campus. In recognition of another anniversary, most of the program reproduced Ms. Poetschke’s 1969 senior recital at the University of North Texas (then called North Texas State University).
Ms. Poetschke had opened with a charming if musically slight cantata, “The Morning,” by Thomas Arne. The vocal apparatus was in fine shape, as always -- bright, clean, effortless on top, focused.
But then she plunged into the emotional maelstrom of the four Mignon songs from Robert Schumann’s “Wilhelm Meister” Lieder (1849), to poems by Goethe from his novel. Two of these are among the greatest of all art songs. In “Kennst du das Land,” the unhappy Mignon (who weaves through young Wilhelm’s life) dreams of returning to her home in Italy. In “Heiss mich nicht reden,” which anticipates the harmonic advances of the mature Wagner, she laments that “only a god” (“nur ein Gott”) can unlock the vow of secrecy that forbids her to reveal her true feelings. In both, Schumann’s music adds layers of psychological depth and urgency to Goethe’s text, so that these songs seem to reveal at least as much about the composer’s disturbed inner life -- he would die insane five years later -- as about Mignon’s.
The astonishing thing about Ms. Poetschke’s performances of these songs was not just that they were beautifully and powerfully vocalized, and not just that she conveyed a deep sense of the texts and of the character speaking through the texts, but that in each case the singer and the song were one. She so fully inhabited the texts and the music as to own them and take responsibility for them. At every moment, and most especially in the desolation she brought to the words “nur ein Gott” in “Heiss mich nicht reden,” it was as though she were risking herself, revealing herself, standing naked in front of us.
So far as I know, Ms. Poetschke’s life has little in common with the fictional Mignon’s or the historical Schumann’s, beyond their common humanity. But that is enough, because the truth is that every extreme of human feeling resides in some small fraction of each of us. The interpretive artist’s task, too seldom accomplished, is to find that fraction within himself or herself -- it may be hidden away, forgotten, atrophied -- and for a moment surrender to it, no longer a fraction, but the whole. That is what Ms. Poetschke did in these Schumann songs.
The rest of the program was less weighty, but Ms. Poetschke’s surrender to the song, whatever its weight, was never less than entire. Schumann was followed by two 20th century tonal modernists whose fragrant music is too-little heard. Alfred Casella’s Three Thirteenth Century Songs and Norman dello Joio’s Three Songs of Adieu comprised six pieces of wildly divergent character. Drawing from her vast arsenal of vocal colors and textures, Ms. Poetschke nailed them all, whether in the silliness of Casella’s “Amante solo, vaghiccia di voi,” in which a farm hand woos a woman with the offer of “a basket of salad,” or in the wounded but intact pride of dello Joio’s “After Love,” which closes with the devastating line, “I cannot, having been your lover, stoop to become your friend.”
“Olympia’s Song,” from Jacque Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann,” was packaged as a time-warp duet, the second stanza being sung by a soprano named Linda Catt (now named Linda Poetschke) in a recording from that long-ago senior recital.
Ms. Poetschke closed with a recent piece, Ben Moore’s sentimental “On Music,” which the singer dedicated “to all of my students through the years.” It was sung with unmistakable love.
Pianist Christine Debus was not just a collaborator but a supportive partner throughout the program. Rita Linard was the excellent flutist in the Arne cantata.
Mike
Greenberg
