Ian Bostridge, who has a voice of almost otherworldly purity, performs an all-Schubert recital tonight at Jordan Hall.
Classical notes
That unmistakable tenor timbre
Ian Bostridge, who has a voice of almost otherworldly purity, performs an all-Schubert recital tonight at Jordan Hall.
Ian Bostridge was well on his way to an academic career as a historian when singing, which had until then been a passionate hobby, became his full-time gig. His highly distinctive tenor voice - lean and willowy, with an almost otherworldly purity - has made him one of the most readily identifiable singers of his time. His most recent visit to Boston was in a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion with the Boston Symphony Orchestra last year, and it showed as well as anything the intensity and textual sensitivity he can marshal.
Yet perhaps because of his bookish appearance, Bostridge - who sings an all-Schubert recital tonight at Jordan Hall - is still thought of by some in professorial terms, as if beneath his artistry lurked the soul of a clinical, disinterested mind.
For his part, Bostridge doesn't much care how people label him, though it's his view that just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no intellectuals on stage.
"The only thing I always say is, I'm obviously a person with a sort of academic bent to my mind and I tend to look at things intellectually," he says by phone from New York, the morning after a Carnegie Hall performance. "But I think when you're performing, performance is about letting go and emotional identification and emotional projection to the audience.
"So it's not an intellectual process and I don't see that you can do it intellectually," he continues. "And I think people project a lot of what they think of me because of my biography onto the way I perform. Which doesn't make much sense, really."
If Bostridge is prone to being tagged as cerebral, something of the opposite is true of Schubert, still thought of in some quarters as an unsophisticated naïf whose genius was a miraculous gift rather than the product of learning and labor.
"My wife [the writer Lucasta Miller] works a lot on the Bronte sisters," Bostridge says, "and Emily Bronte is always being presented as this sort of naïve, possessed genius, in a parallel way to Schubert being presented as, you know, simple little Franzi. But they're both very sophisticated, deeply intellectually interested artists."
Though his recital partner for this tour is his longtime accompanist, Julius Drake, he has a large stable of collaborators, especially in Schubert. He's worked with Mitsuko Uchida in the cycle "Die schöne Müllerin" and Antonio Pappano in "Schwanengesang," his most recent recording (EMI). Some of his best work has been in a series of CDs done with Leif Ove Andsnes, which paired Schubert songs and piano sonatas.
"Julius is the person I'm musically closest to," Bostridge explains, mentioning that their partnership goes back almost 20 years. "We have a similar sort of sensibility in relation to Schubert: We tend to see the Romantic side of it. And the tension in working with Leif Ove - which is a good tension - is that he's a more balanced, classical person. So we were pulling in different directions, which is always interesting."
Though Bostridge spends significant time in opera houses - he has earned consistently high praise in Britten operas - most of his career is focused on lieder recitals. That's a product not only of inclination but of practical considerations. "Because I've got a family, I made a decision about four years ago not to do any new long-rehearsal opera productions abroad, which is quite self-limiting," he says. And while balancing the demands of work and family is always tricky, "I'm luckier than most, because I can do such a lot of recital work that I can be in control of my own destiny."
Among projects he hopes to undertake in the future, Pelléas in Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" and Loge in Wagner's "Rheingold" are two surprises. So is his next major undertaking: as Macheath in a summer production of "The Threepenny Opera," a piece that Bostridge says he's loved since he was a teenager.
Still, tonight's Schubert recital finds him at his center of gravity. "The reason I became a singer is that I wanted to sing lieder, and the great lieder composer is Schubert. I always feel like I'm coming home when I'm singing him."
Presented by
Serkin at Longy
The Longy School of Music announced earlier this week that Peter Serkin has joined its faculty as artist in residence. The intrepid American pianist will teach a handful of the school's piano majors, who will work with him both at Longy and at Serkin's home in Western Massachusetts."The Longy School of Music is an institution that I very much appreciate - for its traditions, and especially for its vision," Serkin said in a statement issued by the school. "Inspired by an eagerness to develop students' musicianship, knowledge, and inquisitiveness, the Longy School is actively benefiting many young musicians. I feel honored to have been invited and I am very much looking forward to teaching at the Longy School."
Serkin kicks off the new partnership with a concert next Saturday, at which he'll play music by John Bull, Debussy, Bach, and Brahms (the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel).
617-876-0956, www.longy.edu
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