Liberation reviews Matthias Goerne and Leif Ove Andsnes’ Schubert cycle in Paris

“On stage, Matthias Goerne makes compromises …  The lied specialist, knows how to transcend all the pitfalls in these songs with a breathtaking interpretation. Sober, and with rare body movements that help to singularise certain notes or to slip into certain melodic turns, the baritone lives in a discreet trance. He sings with his eyes in the void, blindly, sometimes dancing, and his voice invokes the Schubertian powers beyond the melody bringing the stream, ribbon, lute on the wall directly before our own eyes … his magical tricks work. The wonderfully morbid country of Schubert is invited on stage.

“… And when, at the end of the cycle, pianist Andsnes and Goerne singer perform the final notes, there is an apotheosis of silence, ten, twenty seconds … time is suspended, an overwhelming time that is an appreciation of the creators, Schubert and Müller, who could almost be heard applauding.”

 

 

 

Source: Liberation