A young woman with an immaculate face and innocent gaze was on the stage of the Vilabertran canonry yesterday. Erika Baikoff, 29 years old, an American of Russian origin with a past as a classical dancer, appeared at the opening concert of the Schubertiad like a Grace Kelly out of a fairy tale. beautiful
The squire at the piano, James Baillieu, who has sensitive credentials known to the audience of the Schubertiade, would offer with the soprano a wide and partly unknown program: from lieder by Schubert to romansov by Rachmaninov. The fusion of poetry and music of the great Viennese and Russian masters.
And bread! From the first minute, intoning with innocent sensuality Schubert’s Atys on Johann Mayrhofer’s poem, Baikoff showed off an innate ability to capture the audience. By the next lied, the dramatic and haunting Der Zwerg, a ballad with verses by Johann Mayrhofer in which a dwarf scolds the queen for abandoning her king, Baikoff was already bringing the crowd to tears.
And the festival had only just begun.
The young woman would make known a rarely frequented repertoire, such as that of the Viennese critic and professor Joseph Marx (1864-1905), who coined the term “atonality” in his doctoral thesis. And he would delve into his contemporary Korngold and the Sechs einfache Lieder that he composed at the age of fourteen, already with “its attractive play between tonality and atonality”, as the music critic and publicist Antoni Colomer writes in the program on hand.
Part of the Barcelona musical world had not wanted to miss the appointment, such as Joaquim Uriach and Joan Oller, president and general director of the Palau de la Música respectively, or their predecessor in the position, Mariona Carulla. Nor does the general director of Inaem attend these literary evenings. For their part, the President of the Government and the Minister of Culture delegated the representative of the Territorial Services – perhaps because of the absence of Catalan artists at the opening evening. But, alert, the new mayor of Vilabertran, Eudald Brugat, also went there, who brought a lot of people. In fact, there was an abundance of the public not necessarily loyal to the Schubertiade, but who kept sepulchral silence like the most veteran, kidnapped by the magic that the soprano gave off.
His childish appearance could not be confused. After beautiful moments of coloratura or lyricism in which the singer managed to be expressive in the “less is more” way, there were others of a drama more typical of an old soul. And russian If it was necessary to roll up her sleeves, the soprano did not hesitate to drag the audience into the mud of emotions.
“I’m hallucinating”, said Joan Oller at intermission, when the Russian throne box had yet to be unveiled. If the German lied originates from the Germanic literature of the end of the 18th century, in the Russian song they collect the heritage of the musical prosody of Pushkin or Glinka, composers such as Rimsky-Kórsakov and Tchaikovsky. And Baikoff approached it with the knowledge of those who delve into its roots. Here the young woman was transformed. And, already in Rachmaninov’s themes, the tears rolled again. As he pointed out in La Vanguardia, he had delved into the Russian tradition on his own until he recovered the original scores that had been lost during the Soviet era.
Víctor Medem, the director of the Schubertíada, the great invention that Dr. Roch launched three decades ago, discovered it back in the day at a singing competition, that of Helmut Deutsch in Vienna. He presented it last year at the Schubertíada de Cantabria and that of Valdegovía, but since then he has made a spectacular leap in quality that foreshadows that he has become part of the family of artists who sign for the Schubertíada. Pianist Daniel Haide, who today accompanies Christoph Prégardien and 24, Andrè Schuen, cycled there yesterday as part of this family. “I have taken the path of Rieger”, he said. The route from Figueres to Vilabertran that Wolfram Rieger has been doing for years in this very international corner of musical Catalonia.
