I arrived at Alice Tully Hall at the last minute, but Marilyn Horne was on the same schedule. And I figured they wouldn’t—couldn’t—start without her.
This was last night, and the event was a recital by Karita Mattila, the veteran Finnish soprano and opera star. She was accompanied by Martin Katz, who was Horne’s pianist for many years.
And I had a memory of Horne, concerning Mattila: she once expressed particular admiration to me of Mattila’s Leonore, in Fidelio.
When Mattila took the stage last night, she was greeted with a rapturous and sustained ovation: an opera-style ovation, not a recital-style one. The first half of the program comprised two works. One was the Zigeunerlieder of Brahms; the other was the Wesendonck-Lieder of Wagner.
Katz attacked the first of the Zigeunerlieder, or Gypsy Songs, fearlessly and musically. Throughout the song, and indeed throughout the cycle, he played with an exemplary sense of rhythm.
In that first song, Mattila was operatic, which is not to say wrong. She sang the song with abandon, which the song can take. She did not back off as the cycle continued. She was big and bold and sometimes brazen. You could fault her for a certain lack of refinement. And her intonation was not always reliable.
Also, she sang some of the songs like pop songs, or cabaret songs. This is not to say that they were wrong. With portamento, she was liberal, sliding around.
More and more, as the cycle continued, she could not resist dancing. She danced like a Gypsy, not quite like Salome (for which she is famous).
I could criticize her Brahms, point by point. But it was fundamentally musical. And, when it was over, I had enjoyed it, very much. I thought of a pop lyric: “It can’t be wrong when it feels so right.”
Now to the Wesendonck-Lieder, those pre-Isolde studies. In the first song, “Der Engel,” Mattila was rather rough. And the song had no transport. Katz, incidentally, was marvelous. For twenty, twenty-five years, I heard him regularly. I have not heard him much in recent years. And I had almost forgotten how good he is.
In her Wagner, as in her Brahms, Mattila was bold, assertive, forward. Almost brassy, I would say. The songs had unusually little mystery or enchantment. The final song, “Träume,” should be really transporting. I figured that, on this evening, it would be pretty earthbound.
Katz began the song superbly—just as the doctor ordered. As for Mattila, I was wrong: she transported indeed, along with Katz, and along with Wagner.
Owing to other duties, your correspondent could not stay for the second half of the recital. It began with Berg—the Vier Lieder, Op. 2—and ended with a Strauss group. The very last of that group was—what else?—“Cäcilie.”
This song ends many a program, if it is not sung as an encore. A splendid burst, it is the kind of song that performers like to go out with, or wow with. I wonder whether Strauss knew he had written such a piece, when he put his pen down.
What La Mattila sang for an encore, or encores, I don’t know. You know what I would have sung, or been tempted to sing, even with piano? I thought of it during the Wesendonck-Lieder: the Liebestod.