A sad adieu

Music: Winterreise Wigmore Hall, London

Interviewed by Richard Baker on Radio 3 last Friday, the veteran Swiss tenor Ernst Haefliger said he preferred not to promote his son, the pianist Andreas, by using him as an accompanist. Their performance of Schubert's Winterreise at the Wigmore Hall on Saturday was billed as part of a farewell tour. Ernst is only a few weeks short of 76, and now that Andreas has made his own mark as a fine soloist, the shoe seems to be on the other foot.

Though the journey in Winterreise is terminal, it is still young man's music. Ernst Haefliger sang it many years ago. Now he sounds every bit his age; his singing on Saturday was a testimonial to his technique, but it was effortful and strained in a way that added little to the expression of the songs and could only prompt regret and sadness at the loss of a voice.

Weary of the world the march-like opening song may be, but not feeble, surely. The threadbare quality of Haefliger's tone did not bode well for the 23 songs to follow, yet it has to be said that, while he did not promise much, he didn't fall far below his opening form either; he stayed the course. The last line of "Die Wetterfahne" sounded a bit approximate and the energetic contours of "Rast", requiring nimble negotiation, sounded arduous. Yet the wide spans of "Wasserflut" were firmly measured and each time you expected the voice to crack or fail on its final ascending semitone, it hit the note truly.

Quiet songs in Winterreise far outnumber loud ones, and you could argue that Haefliger's bluster in "Der sturmische Morgen" was true to the song's character. Yet sometimes he projected none too distinctly in the gentler songs - "Der Wegweiser" all but disappeared. Andreas appeared undaunted by any of this. He could hardly have been too soft much of the time, yet to his credit, he never sounded merely deferential. He showed an easy flexibility in "Die Krahe" and an appropriately fluttering freedom in "Letzte Hoffnung", in which hope is pinned to a fallen leaf. In the final dirge of "Der Leiermann" (The Hurdy-gurdy Man), both father and son relaxed and underlined points broadly; this was not the austere interpretation one often hears, but it had a spacious, conclusive quality.

There was just one, appropriately chosen, encore - Schubert's Im Abendrot. Ernst Haefliger obviously found its quietly sustained quality difficult to achieve and the effect was tense rather than calm. If it's a pity we haven't heard him in London for so long, it's also a pity he didn't make his farewell sooner.

Adrian Jack