Review: Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis - Edinburgh Queen’s Hall

Hearing Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis as a remarkable recording duo is one thing; hearing them deliver Schubert’s Die Winterreise live on an appropriately cold winter’s evening is quite another.

Schubert’s song cycle was the sole work in this New Town Concerts Society recital, but as such it was a wholly satisfying entity.

That had everything to do with the symbiotic chemistry of the two artists – Padmore, whose versatile tenor is as capable of achieving the whispered desolation of Wasserflut as it is the explosive anguish of Auf dem Flusse; and Lewis, whose intimate knowledge of Schubert’s piano canon is beautifully transferred to his role as accompanist.

Their one unshakeable aim was to express the music’s volatile narrative with a natural intensity – nothing forced or vulgar,everything scaled to the intimacy of the genre.

It was a performance completely void of pretension or mere gesture. Whether by accident or design, an inbuilt fragility in Padmore’s voice produced delicious moments to savour, in their own way as spellbinding as the volcanic eruptions of Frühlingstraum or Der stürmische Morgen.

If anything added grounding to Padmore’s airborne presentation, it was Lewis’s fresh, probing underpinning of the vocal line. No more evident, perhaps, than in the hymn like understatement of Das Wirsthaus, where the piano’s subtle dominance is paramount.

Or in the weirdly droning Hurdy Gurdy Man, which brought this sublime recital to a mystical and magical end.

Rating: ****