Bo knows lieder. The dashing Danish baritone Bo Skovhus, who has built his singing career in the arenas of both opera and song literature, gave a fine illustration of the latter art on Sunday afternoon at Sumphony Center.
He started out rather shakily in a group of English songs set by Haydn. English is a difficult language in which to be understood even for native speakers, and one must admire his courage in attempting the deed, but most of his words were incomprehensible. Seemingly nervous, he failed to convey the delicate charm of these verses and their music and instead resorted too often to unfortunate vocal tricks like crooning, barking and sliding into pitches.
The vocal, dramatic and diction situations all improved greatly in the second section, a group of seven songs by Hugo Wolf, and still more in the second-half opener of Brahms’ “Lieder and Songs,” Opus 32. Skovhus’ German is excellent, and he seems much more at home in brooding over the minor tragedies of assorted lost loves than when singing of stalwart British sailors or Echo’s cave. The Brahms songs, in particular, were superbly performed, almost a textbook example of how to sing this music, replete with subtle shadings of vocal color and theatrical nuance.
The final group was the afternoon’s standout, a short song cycle, “Ur kung Eriks visor,” by the Swedish composer Ture Rangstrom (1884-1947). With texts by a Swedish composer, Gustaf Froding, the five songs follow a mad medieval king from a triumph to his last moments in prison. Skovhus fully inhabited the persona of the king, carousing or raging, in an astonishing performance. Here his vocal tricks were used well to suitable dramatic effect.
Conductor/pianist Christoph Eschenbach brought out all the possibilities of the accompaniments with care and skill that were particularly noticeable in the Wolf songs, and with tremendous power, where called for, particularly in the Rangstrom group.
He and Skovhus provided three encores: a song by Carl Nielsen, Wolf’s “Liebesglueck” and a Brahms setting of a Heinrich Heine poem heard earlier in Wolf’s setting, “Mein Liebchen, wir sassen beisammen.”
Chicago audiences are often criticized for their mass impersonations of Violetta Valery in the final throes of consumption, so it is worth noting that this audience maintained an almost complete silence during the entire recital.
Their quiet made the afternoon a much more enjoyable experience.
