Martha Fischer and Bill Lutes have created a season highlight.
Perhaps the most affable and personable of composers, Franz Schubert was also the most gregarious. His friends and supporters in Vienna gathered regularly for musical and social gatherings known as “Schubertiades.”
For the past four years, Bill Lutes and Martha Fischer, UW-Madison’s piano power couple, have been creating their own version of these events at Mills Hall.
On Jan. 29, the husband-and-wife team assembled a team of singers from School of Music students and faculty, including a number of excellent singers who performed solo and ensemble pieces. A special guest this time was UW alum Emily Birsan, the rising soprano who is always welcome in her return appearances in Madison. Audiences may remember her superb portrayal of the female lead in Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet with the Madison Opera last fall.
The substantial program, organized by Lutes, contained more unfamiliar examples of Schubert’s songs than familiar ones, so there were lots of wonderful discoveries. Among her five solos, Birsan contributed some outstanding treats. She brought appropriate theatrical flair to an operatic parody of a letter to an absent friend. And Viola set a text about the prematurely blossoming and soon-dead violet that could be taken as an allegory for Schubert’s own sad destiny. Baritone Paul Rowe delivered a moving performance of a song about a youth facing death.
Also notable were some ensemble numbers, such as the wonderful Ständchen (Serenade), and a birthday cantata for singer Johann Michael Vogl, an important member of Schubert’s circle.
Fischer sang beautifully in two vocal solos, while she and Lutes alternated as dynamic accompanists. They also joined in two selections for piano four hands. And in the event’s tradition, all the performers joined the audience in singing An die Musik as a finale.
The full vocal texts, with translations, were provided in a handout to the audience, and the program included notes on the music by Lutes.
These “Schubertiades” are now highlights of each season. Given the composer’s abundant musical resources, audiences can hope for at least 20 more to come.
