Like a long road that changes its name once or twice and offers varying scenery along the way, this programme preserves an essential continuity. The journey has a certain dreamlike quality, from the outset – blest by a visiting angel from childhood – to the arrival, as larks fly towards the setting sun. In between, the dream is troubled, haunted by nameless anxieties even amid the chrysanthemums and nightingales. Only once, and that near the start in the second of the Wesendonk Lieder, does the vigorous urgency of movement reclaim the soul from its living dream. Otherwise the yearnings of late romanticism are uninterrupted, most languid and luxurious in Wagner’s ‘Im Treibhaus’, most angst-ridden in Berg’s ‘Schilflied’, most profoundly resolved in Strauss’s ‘Im Abendrot’.
The performances do nothing to disturb this sense of continuity. Everything is cared for – fine orchestral colouring in all three works and a settled maturity of voice and conviction in the singer. Nothing individually cries out for a special response that would cause a diversion, and no personal foible of expression intrudes to point out a new view or a different perspective: only this irresistible suggestion of unity in which the three works impart something of each to both of the others.
Jane Eaglen is vocally well suited. In the Wesendonk Lieder she has the Brunnhilde voice at her command for ‘Stehe still’ and ‘Schmerzen’ and can lighten without losing warmth of tone in the others. Certain of the Berg songs, notably No 3, ‘Die Nachtigall’, gain a fuller generosity than usual from this amplitude of voice.
In Strauss, the heroic build of voice takes least readily to the first song, ‘Fruhling’, which reveals some wear on the high notes, though the phrasing is broad. Her singing gives me only mixed satisfaction even so: sustained notes are mostly steady but less so the shorter ones (the opening phrase of ‘Der Engel’ at the beginning of the recital illustrates this). Occasionally the intonation sharpens slightly.
I like her best in the Berg. The violin and horn soloists in the Strauss also deserve mention: the one sweet like a Kreisler, the other richly autumnal.'