Tenor Christoph Pregardien's Schubert recital simply spellbinding

CONCERT CHRISTOPH PREGARDIEN SINGS SCHUBERT'S DIE SCHONE MULLERIN

- Geoffrey Lim

CONCERT CHRISTOPH PREGARDIEN SINGS SCHUBERT'S DIE SCHONE MULLERIN Victoria Concert Hall Tuesday

The entire psychodrama of Austrian composer Franz Schubert's shattering portrayal of unrequited yearning, Die Schone Mullerin, hangs on a seemingly innocent line in Tranenregen, the 10th song and the midpoint of the cycle.

Schubert and German author Wilhelm Muller's incel miller protagonist relates how he has made contact, for the first and only time in the work, with the woman who is the object of his fixation, only for her to rebuff him by casually excusing herself to return indoors due to the rain. It is unclear whether she refers pragmatically to real rainfall or sarcastically to the miller's tears.

That single intrusion of reality turns the miller's hopeful infatuation to bitterness, and sets him spiralling on a course to breakdown and oblivion that presages the existential bleakness of the succeeding song cycle Winterreise.

German opera singer Christoph Pregardien and pianist Michael Gees' sublime delivery of this passage in their recital at Victoria Concert Hall demonstrated their peerlessness in this repertoire.