You could call it that, those two concerts in the series of Festival 20·21! One was titled: Die schöne Müllerin. The other Eine schöne Müllerin. They were two worlds apart. The well-known song cycle by Schubert and that same song cycle 'differently' by contemporary composer Daan Janssens.
Die Schöne Müllerin
On my way to the first concert at the Leuven Maria Theresia College, the grand hall of the university, I quickly stop by De Vetten Os for a coffee. A folk café near the former Leuven slaughterhouse. A rather intoxicated regular there is singing a schlager. No worries, after all, I'm going to listen to a schlager too, but one by Schubert. Also two worlds of difference, just like the two concerts turn out to be: folk romanticism versus contemporary rationality.
On stage in the hall there is no Steinway this time. Obviously not, because it is after all Jos Van Immerseel who will accompany baritone Thomas Bauer. It is a replica of a pianoforte by the 19th-century Viennese piano builder Conrad Graf. And from the first note you realize: what a sound, what an instrument, what a pianist. And a singer who sometimes sings with intimate softly blown tone, but when necessary also gives full, clear and powerful voice.
Each song, each verse is projected and can be followed nicely in German. More could have been done. And even if you know the text, you are still amazed by that poetry. It is of a simplicity, found on the deep ground of life. A simplicity that you also naturally find in the sometimes extremely sober piano part. And all of that set to music based on the equally simple story of a brook that leads a lovesick young man to die schöne Müllerin, and – rejected – to death. Yet he gives himself completely: "Ich gebe mich drein", he takes his chances, but "das Wild das ich jagte ist der Tod". It is a joy (how can you use that word for this tragic song…) to listen to the almost emptiness of the piano part. Minimalist, yet maximalist in terms of tonal richness, and certainly on this instrument rebuilt by Christopher Clarke and brought along by Van Immerseel from his own collection.
Both performers have a beautiful instrument: the pianist his pianoforte, the singer his velvet voice. We know the song cycle from hundreds of recordings with renowned interpreters, but what you heard here in this combination was wonderfully beautiful. With a grateful and delighted audience that let the final notes on "…und der Himmel da oben, wie ist er so weit" fade away in a long silence, before bursting into tremendous applause. Heaven seemed a little closer after all.
Eine Schöne Müllerin
And two days later, Schubert again, but now in a world premiere. An idea born over a coffee: professor and artistic director of Festival 20·21, Pieter Bergé, asks former student and composer Daan Janssens whether he is willing to reflect in the 21st century on Schubert's 19th-century Schöne Müllerin. It takes a while before he says yes, but he does. After all, there is still three years to go before the premiere. Tonight this commissioned work is titled: "Eine schöne Müllerin". A different one then, but by analogy with the first. And it has even become a double cycle. Alongside the arrangement of the Schubert songs, the composer created a couple of complementary songs. And sought for the texts a soul equally tormented - but now a contemporary one - as the young man from the poem by Wilhelm Müller. He found it in the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. One of the sentences from that work that Daan Janssens uses for such a new song, expresses the same tragedy pointedly: "… fate only wanting what I certainly cannot get ....". The baritone Thomas Bauer also sings these texts in German to maintain the unity of the whole. Janssens orchestrated the accompaniment for the Spectra Ensemble at the Schubert songs and instrumented the Pessoa texts. Because that is actually his strength. In his songs, and especially in the few fragments in between, he sounds out a recognizable idiom where he uses instruments in their improper tonal value. And in both of these possibilities he achieves with flying colors the intimacy so present in the first concert. At the opening the music sounds even darker than in Schubert, even though the bass drum is used. But the timpanist not only rolls, he also rubs threateningly over the drumhead. And the cycle ends with the quietest and longest horn note you have ever heard.
The double cycle remains a poetic Schubert supplemented with a prosaic Pessoa, hopelessly romantic and delicately supplemented with the rationality of an intellectual composer, namely Daan Janssens. Too bad that during the long applause he appeared only once on stage, and far too modestly.
- WHAT: Franz Schubert, Die Schöne Müllerin
- WHO: Jos Van Immerseel, pianoforte (on a Conrad Graf replica, built by Christopher Clarke) - Thomas Bauer, baritone
- WHEN: Thursday 18 October 2018
- WHERE: Grand Hall, Maria-Theresia College, Leuven
- WHAT: Daan Janssens, Eine Schöne Müllerin
- WHO: Spectra Ensemble - Filip Rathé, conductor - Thomas Bauer, baritone
- WHEN: Saturday 20 October 2018
- WHERE: Grand Hall, Maria-Theresia College, Leuven
- ORGANIZATION: Festival 20·21
- PHOTOS: © via Festival 20·21
