Fatma Said on Lieder

Released at the beginning of February on Warner Classics, Fatma Said's first Lieder album sees the Egyptian soprano joining forces with Malcolm Martineau and Joseph Middleton (plus special guests including baritone Huw Montague Rendall, clarinettist Sabine Meyer and the Quatuor Arod) for a programme of songs by Schubert, Brahms, Robert Schumann and the Mendelssohns.

Fatma spoke to me last month about becoming near-fluent in the German language when she was growing up in Cairo, the inspirational teacher who guided her through Goethe and Eichendorff as a teenager, the joy and freedom of making music with true friends - and why her heart lies in the concert-hall rather than the opera-house for the moment...

This is your first straightforward song recital album, and offers quite a contrast with both El Nour and Kaleidoscope - why did you feel that the time was right for a Lieder recording?

There’s something about this era that just pulls me in - these are composers that I’ve loved singing for almost twenty years now. And this is the most traditional album I’ve done so far: the previous ones were much more edgy and experimental, and this time I wanted to do a programme which isn’t too far away from something Schwarzkopf might have recorded. 

But I also wanted to showcase my huge passion for chamber music and invite other instrumentalists along, rather than doing a straight voice and piano recital. The guest artists are what makes this album truly unique for me: I love making music with friends, and making new friends through making music!

Were you fluent in German from a young age?

I grew up with German, Arabic and English as my main languages, then I started French in sixth or seventh grade. My sister and I both attended a Catholic all-girls school in Cairo which was established over a century ago by German nuns; more of these institutions have been set up in recent years but mine was one of the oldest, and one of the great advantages of the curriculum is that you can speak at least three languages almost fluently by the time you finish. 

At the end of high school I did my German Abitur (the equivalent of the French Baccalauréat), so by the time I moved to Berlin to study singing I spoke German very well. And before all of that I went to a German kindergarten, so my life has been very German from the beginning!

Being multilingual was quite normal when I was growing up in Egypt: my school-days coincided with the beginning of the internet, so we had a lot of access to things like MTV and Disney films and that meant that English was also very natural to me from a young age.

What (or who) ignited your love of German literature?

That happened in the last three years of school. Our set work for the abitur was Goethe’s Faust, and we had a brilliant German teacher called Reinhardt Grätz (with whom I’m still in contact today). He was such a wonderful guide through that enormously complicated text, and I also have a very clear memory of him introducing us to 'Mondnacht' by Eichendorff – he explained so much about the layers and colours in the poem, and about Eichendorff’s own life and times. 

Receiving this kind of grounding in German language and literature at such a young age had a very big impact on how I understood Lieder later on. When I got to sing Schumann’s setting of 'Mondnacht' and Schubert’s setting of 'Gretchen am Spinnrade' at university, everything Herr Grätz had taught us came into sharper focus. At seventeen I probably understood much less of Gretchen, but his teaching had already given me the intellectual tools I needed: once I was a little older and had this glorious music to illuminate the text even more, it all came together. 

We’re so lucky to have people like Schumann, Schubert and Brahms to interpret this poetry in music, because it can bring us even closer to what the poet wanted to say. And I love exploring the various perspectives which composers can offer: if Schumann and Wolf both set the same poem their interpretations are often wildly different. But we’re talking about geniuses here, so those different perspectives are equally valid and beautiful.

Which singers and song-pianists hold a special place in your heart?

I always loved Dalton Baldwin and Elly Ameling’s Lieder recordings, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf moves me to tears. I find some of those recordings irreplaceable, not so much for the beauty of the voice itself as for the heart’s intention. Whenever I listen to Schwarzkopf singing Schubert, it's as if she's right there just talking to me: she makes me forget that I’m listening to music, in the best possible sense. That’s what I always hope to be able to do in my own interpretations, because I think it touches people far more than a lovely pianissimo high note or a super-nice legato. It’s a big part of the inspiration behind this album. 

Speaking of high notes, I notice you perform some of these songs in lower keys than most sopranos (and even some mezzos!)

The beauty of song repertoire is being able to transpose: I can’t sing 'Caro nome' in Rigoletto down a tone, but I can sing 'Widmung' or 'Der Zwerg' in whatever key I want! The Schubert and Schumann Lieder are published in three ‘sizes’ - high, medium and low - but what happens if you’re in-between, or need to mix and match? I wasn’t going for lower keys across the board: I just wanted the programme to be custom-made for my voice-box. I didn’t want to be distracted by thinking too much about vocal technique (as inevitably happens in opera, even in roles that are comfortable); that kind of thing pulls my focus away from the text, so I went for the keys that felt as natural as possible.

I strongly believe that every singer is born with a unique palette. I’m not a standard soprano (whatever that even means!): a lot of people listen to me and think I’m a mezzo, but I wanted to throw those labels away. I did so much experimentation with all of these songs to find the keys where the text can really shine with my type of voice colour. The goal wasn’t to showcase my top notes - it was to find the sweet spot where I can get the words across the listener most effectively.

What’s the story behind your partnerships with Joseph Middleton and Malcolm Martineau?

It’s quite unusual to have two such high-profile pianists on one recording, and the fact that they were willing to share the programme says a lot about who they are as people. Neither of them wanted top billing, because they aren’t driven by ego - it’s just all about the music. 

I was introduced to Joseph when I joined the BBC New Generation Artists scheme in 2016: I needed a pianist for a recording so they suggested that we might work well together, and I felt we hit it off right away and never stopped working together since. I feel like I’ve known Malcolm by name forever but never dreamed that we might work together…I asked him to join me for a concert a few years ago (also for the BBC NGA scheme), and we became very good friends. I’m very close to both of them on a personal level now: we visit each other just to hang out and we know each other's families. It’s not just a musical partnership: it’s a genuine friendship, and that means a lot to me.

I don’t think you can do chamber music - especially as a singer - if you don’t like the people you work with! There’s so much trust involved. Whether you’re on stage or in the studio, you’re constantly making musical offers which will sometimes be welcomed and reciprocated…and sometimes not! If those offers are rejected when you’re working with friends, you don’t take it personally because you’re comfortable with each other enough to know that you’re pulling together to serve the music. You don’t go back home in tears about what someone said to you or worry that you somehow upset your pianist by questioning their tempo-choice!

But making new friends through music is also special: Huw Montague Rendall and I had never worked together before this album, but I really hope our paths cross again in the future. If I’m allowed to have a favourite track on the recording, it has to be Schumann’s 'In der Nacht', which we recorded after just one rehearsal!

What’s coming up for you this season?

I haven’t closed the door on opera, but right now my heart is somewhere else! Making this album reminded me of how much I love chamber music, and that’s my priority for now: doing concerts with ensembles and connecting with orchestras. I recently made my Berliner Philharmoniker debut with Giovanni Antonini and absolutely loved it; that partnership will continue next year, and of course I’ll be doing more song recitals. 

However, I did record Belinda in Dido & Aeneas with Il Pomo d’Oro and Joyce DiDonato as Dido: we did a lovely tour last year, and the album should be available to pre-order very soon! And there’s also a Mozart Requiem coming out on Warner later this year - with Marianne Crebassa, Pene Pati and Alexandros Stavrakakis, and Michael Sanderling conducting the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester…