Prey’s Lieder Lacked Luster in S.D. Recital

Franz Schubert’s classic song cycle “Die Winterreise” (“The Winter Journey”) should be more than a travelogue on a seasonal theme. Under optimal circumstances, it can be a probing, existential query expressed through the painterly images of Wilhelm Muller’s brooding, arch-romantic poetry.

German baritone Hermann Prey took his Sherwood Auditorium audience on a bumpy, decidedly coach-class “Winterreise” on Saturday night. It’s not that the veteran lieder singer didn’t know the territory. Over his 40-year career, Prey, 62, has performed and recorded the gamut of German lieder. In 1987, he sang a witty, affable Figaro in San Diego Opera’s production of Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia.” But Schubert’s musical excursion proved more vocally taxing than that opera buffa adventure.

From the outset of the Schubert, Prey’s voice sounded tired, brittle and dark without mitigating warmth. The weariness he communicated from the cycle’s opening “Gute Nacht” was not the spiritual exhaustion of Muller’s lost soul protagonist, but more like the fatigue of a worker who has put in too much overtime.

Only in the last three of the cycle’s 24 songs did the singer unleash the poignant despair that should have been a steadily building undercurrent throughout the work. A few highly dramatic moments, such as the defiant climax of “Mut” (“Courage”) and the anguish of “Die Post” (“The Mail”), relieved the monochromatic parlando Prey employed for most of the cycle. Instead of heightening the emotional intensity of Schubert’s incomparable melodies, he simply sang louder. And in the extremes of Prey’s range, pitch was at times less than sure.

American pianist Leonard Hokanson gave Prey faithful, attentive keyboard support and sustained the momentum when the vocalist flagged. The recital was sponsored by San Diego Opera.