Song recitals are theatre, in which singers become other people, usually several at once. Cathy Berberian, in 1972, became a salon diva of the Edwardian era, and the review was an attempt to travel partway with her.

José van Dam

By this point in his career José van Dam has seen a lot and been a lot—everything from St Francis to the devil. His performance of Schubert's Winterreise at Alice Tully Hall on Thursday conveyed, in every breath, that length and breadth of experience, that variety of self-projections, all of which have also been self-examination.

The expressive stance was one of utter candour. Van Dam does not sound like a young man anymore. Come to think of it, he never did. That was never the point. And now, in Winterreise, was no time to start. These were emphatically not the songs of a swain disappointed in love, but those of a man disappointed by life—or not so much disappointed as confirmed in his low expectations. And out of his suffering, out of the bleakness, he comes up with the means to tell his whole story. You listened as if to someone buffeted but robust, looking at you flat-lipped and staring.

Lyricism was no more the issue than youth or love. Christopher H. Gibbs's excellent programme note told us that when Schubert first sang these songs to his friends, they were perplexed and liked only the fifth number, ‘Der Lindenbaum’.