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Vocalises for an Indisposed Diva München
Prinzregententheater
07/15/2026 -
Maurice Ravel: Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Vocalise, op. 34 n° 14 – Preludes, op. 32: 12. Allegro in G sharp minor – 6 Romances, op. 8: 5. “The Dream” – 12 Romances, op. 21: 7. “It’s nice here”
Georges Bizet: Chants du Rhin, op. 4: 3. “Les Rêves” & 6. “Le Retour”
Piotr Tchaikovsky: 6 Romances, op. 38: 3. “Amid the Din of the Ball” – 6 Romances, op. 6: 6. “Only he who knows yearning”
Richard Strauss: Stimmungsbildern, op. 9: 3. Intermezzo. Allegretto – 4 Lieder, op. 27: 4. “Morgen!” – 8 Gedichte aus “Letzte Blätter”, op. 10: 1. “Zueignung” – Vier letzten Lieder: 2. “September” & 4. “Im Abendrot” (Arr. Max Wolff)
Asmik Grigorian (soprano). Lukas Geniusas (piano)
A. Grigorian (© Timofei Kolesnikov)
Few artists on today’s operatic stage generated the level of anticipation that accompanied Asmik Grigorian’s return to the recital platform. The original programme alone promised an evening of uncommon distinction, juxtaposing French melodies with Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder, repertoire that invited not merely vocal display but the highest degree of stylistic refinement. Fate, however, intervened. After a brief delay, it was announced that Grigorian had spent the previous week incapacitated by illness and had only just recovered sufficient voice to appear. Her decision to sing nevertheless deserved admiration. The recital that followed, however, emerged as a heavily abbreviated substitute for what had originally been advertised.
The French half vanished entirely – surely the wisest of the evening’s decisions. Grigorian’s uneasy relationship with French diction had long been apparent, and replacing Hahn’s intoxicating Souvenir de Constantinople and Fauré’s Vocalise-étude with Russian songs by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff proved musically far more congenial. Strauss likewise suffered extensive cuts: the Four Last Songs contracted to only “September” and “Im Abendrot,” while the cancelled interval allowed pianist Lukas Geniusas to assume an even larger share of the proceedings. The result amounted to barely an hour of music, well over half of it entrusted to the keyboard—a surprisingly parsimonious offering for a sold‑out hall whose expectations had been raised by a programme of considerably greater substance.
The revised first half nevertheless demonstrated where Grigorian’s singular gifts lay. Tchaikovsky’s romances unfolded with unaffected warmth, particularly the graceful “Amid the Din of the Ball,” while the Russian setting of Goethe’s “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” acquired genuine dramatic urgency, even if it inevitably remained in the shadow of Beethoven, Schubert and Hugo Wolf’s incomparable responses to Mignon’s longing. Yet it was in the Rachmaninoff songs that the evening finally discovered its artistic centre of gravity.
Grigorian had often remarked that Rachmaninoff’s romances were “miniature operas”, and throughout this sequence she vindicated that observation completely. Rather than treating them as refined salon miniatures, she inhabited each as an intensely compressed psychological drama. Her lustrous spinto soprano expanded with effortless amplitude yet retained remarkable flexibility, glowing in floated pianissimi before blossoming into full dramatic radiance. Every phrase possessed dramatic intention; every emotional turn appeared instinctive rather than calculated. Her melancholy never lapsed into sentimentality, nor did her passionate climaxes sacrifice musical discipline. Here, opera and song briefly became indivisible. One sensed not merely an accomplished interpreter but an artist for whom text, vocal line and theatrical instinct had fused into a wholly persuasive expressive language.
Lukas Geniusas proved no less indispensable to that success. His role consistently transcended accompaniment. Rachmaninoff’s notoriously intricate piano writing emerged with astonishing clarity, refinement and structural purpose, every inner voice carefully balanced, every harmonic colour lovingly realised. His solo contributions – virtuosic yet never ostentatious – provided moments of genuine poetry in their own right. Few contemporary recital partnerships exhibited such instinctive mutual responsiveness; tempi breathed naturally, phrases expanded and contracted with conversational freedom, yet the ensemble never relinquished absolute cohesion.
Strauss, however, exposed rather different truths. There could scarcely have been any quarrel with Grigorian’s vocal resources. The instrument retained its gleaming core, the legato remained impeccably sustained, and the broad cantilenas of “Morgen!” and “Zueignung” unfolded with admirable technical assurance. Yet Strauss’s Lieder demanded infinitely more than sumptuous vocalism. They inhabited that rare territory where poetry and music became inseparable, where the slightest consonant or inflection could alter an entire emotional landscape.
Here the recital encountered its greatest obstacle. Grigorian’s German diction remained persistently opaque. Consonants dissolved, vowels blurred, and much of Hermann Hesse’s and Joseph von Eichendorff’s exquisite verse simply failed to register. Ironically, the piano versions of the Four Last Songs should have illuminated the poetry more vividly than Strauss’s luxuriant orchestration ever permitted. Instead, the reduced texture merely exposed the absence of linguistic specificity. One admired the beauty of the vocal line while remaining curiously excluded from the text that inspired it.
Nor did the interpretations entirely penetrate Strauss’s autumnal world. These songs contemplated mortality with extraordinary serenity, their emotional trajectory progressing from outward contemplation of nature towards inward transcendence. Grigorian’s performances, for all their sincerity, rarely suggested that metaphysical journey. Her generous, richly coloured soprano often remained too compact, too uniformly intense, insufficiently willing to relinquish sheer vocal splendour in favour of inward reflection. Even the closing question of “Im Abendrot”, “Ist dies etwa der Tod?”, arrived less as an existential revelation than as another beautifully sustained phrase. The mystery remained elusive.
Comparison with the great Straussian exponents inevitably became unavoidable. One did not expect another Schwarzkopf, Della Casa, Janowitz, Norman or Isokoski, nor should one. Every generation discovered its own truths in these works. Yet all those singers shared an instinctive understanding that Strauss’s final masterpieces belonged as much to language as to voice. Beautiful singing alone never sufficed.
That, ultimately, touched upon a broader question of artistic judgement. Grigorian remained one of the most compelling singing actresses of her generation, her operatic portrayals distinguished by fearless dramatic commitment and overwhelming emotional immediacy. Yet Lieder occupied a fundamentally different artistic universe. They demanded verbal sophistication every bit as much as vocal mastery, and nowhere more so than in Strauss. One therefore questioned the wisdom of constructing a recital around German song when the essential medium of communication – the language itself – remained so incompletely mastered.
The evening nevertheless contained much to admire. Grigorian’s incandescent identification with the Russian repertoire confirmed once again her extraordinary theatrical instincts, while Geniusas emerged as the recital’s quiet hero, a pianist of uncommon imagination whose artistry consistently elevated everything around him. Yet one departed with the distinct impression of an evening defined as much by what had been absent as by what had actually been heard: an abbreviated programme, a curtailed Strauss offering, and a Lieder recital whose finest moments arrived only when it briefly ceased trying to be one.
Ossama el Naggar
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