Ian Bostridge
Jul 11th, 2008 by oldfogey
Wigmore Hall used to run lunchtime concerts where new young musical talent got the opportunity to perform in public. Entrance fee was nominal, and the audience would normally be not much more than a hundred including Mums and Dads and the rest of the family.
In April 1993 I strayed in during a damp lunch hour. The concert started with a chamber group of young instrumentalists. Their first piece was a new modern work – all squeaks and bumps and farts and sounds of scraping wire – and no worse than others I had “listened” to by more eminent figures, such as Pierre Boulez. They also did the Siegfried Idyll – a lovely, gentle piece belying Wagner’s image as bombastic and overbearing. In between there was a young singer, a tenor. He was thin and a little gaunt, angular, all knees and elbows. He sang Mahler’s “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen”. I have the image of him now, in my mind’s eye, body thrust forward, singing full of passion, without inhibition, lovely clear voice, especially at the top (a touch weaker at the baritone end of things in the last song). There was something so utterly English about him; almost innocence. His hands and arms seemed to move involuntarily with his singing, as part of its expressiveness. It was forceful and vigorous. It was Ian Bostridge’s debut. Several weeks later I was flicking through the channels on the wireless and, by chance, came across a commercial music station, which usually played Easy Listening, broadcasting the very lunchtime concert I had been to at Wigmore Hall. I taped it. Here, from my tape, is Ian Bostridge singing the third song in the cycle “Ich hab ein gluhend Messer in meiner Brust”.
Several weeks later I was flicking through the channels on the wireless and, by chance, came across a commercial music station, which usually played Easy Listening, broadcasting the very lunchtime concert I had been to at Wigmore Hall. I taped it. Here, from my tape, is Ian Bostridge singing the third song in the cycle “Ich hab ein gluhend Messer in meiner Brust”.
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Thank you, oldfogey! I am a great admirer of Mr. Bostridge, have been since I first heard him sing Dies Natalis in 1997. This is an excellent, interesting account of his Wigmore debut. You can say “I was there”. And, as they say, the rest is history. Was that Julius Drake accompanying him? Sounded so to me, but I might be mistaken. Thanks so much for posting this and uploading the Mahler!
Dies Natalis is a lovely work, but I haven’t heard him do it. I like his Die Schone Mullerin. It probably was Julius Drake but I didn’t make a note at the time. Regards OF
Irene - I’ve finally dug out the programme and found out who was playing the piano - it was Roger Vignoles. OF
Hello, OF! Thank you. I saw Mr. Bostridge perform with Roger Vignoles only once, a Schubert/Wolf programme in Paris (it’s on DVD now in fact). Fantastic concert. They never formed “the” relationship that Bostridge and Drake did, but they were both totally attuned to each other on that occasion. Best wishes, I.