What a difference three-and-a-half years can make. In mid-February 2020 – the pandemic’s first lockdown only a few unthinkable weeks in the future – Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen made her debut at London’s Barbican with pianist James Baillieu and a heavy-duty late-Romantic programme. Here was, without doubt, a rising star. Her extraordinary voice made an immediate, visceral impact even in the Barbican’s impersonally large concert hall.
Fast forward through both the pandemic and the steady, steep ascent of Davidsen’s star, and the soprano has made her long-awaited debut at the Wigmore Hall, once again with Baillieu. I’ll be honest: I wasn’t sure the 552-seat hall was going to be the right place to enjoy a voice that proved so show-stopping in Verdi and Wagner at Covent Garden earlier this year.
I shouldn’t have worried. Yes, there was an astonishing final note that echoed, despite the absorptive qualities of the rapt sellout audience, and various moments at which Davidsen found the Hall’s resonant frequency in her powerfully gleaming upper register. But a tremendous subtlety of declamation – a new, finely graded expressive range – was also in evidence.
Opening with Grieg’s five Op 69 songs, Davidsen’s gift for storytelling was immediately apparent. The long melodic lines of Ved Moders Grav (At Mother’s Grave) were unflinching, her musings to a snail improbably but genuinely touching. Much of her singing was positively muted, Baillieu’s exquisite voicing of chords given ample space. The closing set of Sibelius songs, by contrast, began with full-throttle playing from Baillieu, preparing the way for Davidsen to dig deep, the music’s emotional potential laid bare. The Wigmore’s Steinway grand piano – lid fully open, Baillieu throwing his full body weight behind climaxes – has met its match.
In between, Berg’s Seven Early Songs poured out in a silken torrent: by turn gentle and extravagantly tortured. A selection of Schubert lieder saw Erlkönig and Gretchen am Spinnrade reborn as late-Romantic psychodramas – epic, terrifying, ferociously fast – and Die Junge Nonne delivered as if Brünnhilde. Most memorable, though, were moments of sudden stillness: the instant flat calm of Am Tage aller Seelen, sung almost without vibrato, voice and piano in precious, quiet balance.
