reviewvancouver: Early Music Vancouver - Summer Festival 2025 - Forgotten Harmonies: Schubert and Friends

An evening of German lied is always a pleasure, especially when it is centred around Franz Peter Schubert. He is the perfect composer for EMV’s theme of Nature which runs through the festival, and the three songs chosen for the programme are quintessentially of the natural world, flowers, water and the seasons.

Magali Simard-Galdes (soprano) and her partners Simon Poirier (natural horns) and Olivier Godin (fortepiano) created a classic, cohesive sound, full of charm or longing and capable of dramatic heights and quiet intimacy. They have made these songs very much their own. Simard-Galdes has a confident, well-controlled voice, superbly matched with the dynamics and tone of the natural horn. Pianist Olivier Godin is as sensitive to the singer as to the song.

In "Herbst" (Autumn), Schubert evokes a windy, shivering cold with persistent keyboard tremolos while the voice sails cloud-like above. The trio developed the intensity of this metaphor for the human condition driving to its dark conclusion.

"Viola’"showed Simard-Galdes’ gift for nuanced characterisation and dramatic variety. In a pocket song-cycle jam-packed with event and emotion, the Snowdrop blooms, heralding the happy Springtime. A Viola blooms early and eagerly, but she is alone. She searches hopefully for companions, then with desperation; she withers and dies. Spring comes; the Snowdrop rings a knell. The trio presented this hero’s journey with joy and despair.

I had not heard "Auf dem Strom" sung by a soprano voice before, but what a pleasure it was. Simard-Galdes’ voice blended so well with the horn, Godin supporting all with wonderful flowing triplets drawing the singer inevitably forward.

Excluding one modern composer, the other composers on the program were all writing in mid-nineteenth century Younger than Schubert, they still adhered to the ideals of Romanticism. The songs chosen by the trio are by Charles Oberthur, Jan Kalivoda, and Vinzenz Lachner. Oberthur's "Die Heimath" draws the landscape of his homeland, remembered with joy. Kalivoda touches on landscape and loss in "Heimweh". Lachner’s short song "Waldhornruf" contains mountains, forest and murder. Poirier's horn in all these, as in the Schubert songs, is poignantly evocative of the countryside and the forest.

Sandeep Bhagwati was commissioned to write a work for this group, and he has succeeded brilliantly in writing for voice, horn and fortepiano. With his text taken from poems by Heinrich Heine, Schubert's contemporary, on the Schubertian themes of loss, love and longing, "Von Ferne" joined Schubert's followers in a piece sympathetic with Schubert yet distinctly modern. No surprise to hear it beautifully performed by Simard-Galdes, Poirier and Godin who distilled its loneliness and its steadfast hope.

The horn and the fortepiano are both historical instruments delivering a tone likely to have been very familiar to Schubert and his contemporaries, one which is warm and flexible and a perfect companion to the voice. Flowing and gentle, EMV's Graf fortepiano has four pedals, a sustaining pedal, plus three moderating pedals which yield a range of dynamics and colour not found in today's pianos. Together they built a period sound world where words are enriched and felt through music.

It was gratifying to bask in a performance of clean diction, fine phrasing, and a deep understanding of texts and music.