Waltraud Meier, Wigmore Hall

No one performs Wagner and Mahler like Waltraud Meier. As an interpreter of these two most impassioned composers, she excels by all measures. She is a consummate student of the texts, able to work through the minutiae of each line like she truly means in. She has a voice of rare firmness and power. And on stage, she becomes a maelstrom of emotion, effortlessly embodying the likes of Isolde, Kundry, Sieglinde and Ortrud while provoking tears from even the gruffest of audiences. This December, she will return to Wigmore Hall to perform the songs of her two icons, accompanied by her regular partner Joseph Breinl on piano.
The night begins with Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (1901-4), a cycle with an extraordinary tragic drive, before moving onto Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder (1857-8), composed when he was besotted with a patron’s wife. This is a rare glimpse of Wagner on the intimate scale, charged with his own fervor rather than that of mythical beings. After an interval, Meier returns to Mahler, with selections from the folkloric Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1892-1901) before concluding with the cosmic Rukert-Lieder (1901-4), which took the form to a new dramatic scale.