Helping to build the careers of superb young singers is what Wigmore Hall has done for decades: I still remember Olaf Bär’s debut in the hall in 1983, having won the Walther Gruner Lieder competition, and also Matthias Goerne’s in 1997.
But whereas Bär was 25 and Goerne 27 when they first appeared in Wigmore Street, Austrian mezzo-soprano Anja Mittermüller was not yet 21 when she won the Wigmore Hall/Bollinger International Song Competition last year. She has recently turned 22, and still has another year left as a student in Hanover.
Hearing her remarkable Wigmore debut recital at the hall on Friday night – it was livestreamed and will be available online for the next six months, link below – it was impossible not just to be impressed but also to be moved. The clarity, agility and joy of this 22 year-old’s remarkable and youthful voice are just stupendous.
On paper, there were what looked like some odd programme choices. How, one might ask, can a 22 year-old possibly portray the ingrained doubt, the elusive search for happiness in loneliness of Schubert’s “Der Wanderer” which started the programme? Surely these are experiences which life will only bring later? And yet the undeniable truth is that Mittermüller and Fu made those feelings real, with astonishing vividness and authenticity. That set a tone, and ushered in a brilliant opening set of Schubert songs, followed by a fluent and persuasive set of German settings by Grieg.
Similarly, to schedule as the programme-closer Wolf’s “Sterb’ ich, so hüllt in Blumen meine Glieder” ("When I die, cover my limbs with flowers") – a song which never escapes from Wolf’s one and only dynamic marking, pianissimo – is also a bold move. Here, both singer and pianist brought astonishing tenderness and richness of colour to it, a mood which then continued into the hushed encore, Quilter’s 1926 Shelley setting, "Music, when soft voices die". And why did we need Rachmaninov and Russian? That was vindicated too, by a gleaming, joyous, triumphant ending to “Spring Waters”.
Dame Janet Baker once said that the singer’s knowledge of repertoire should “reach a point where every syllable is deeply understood by mind, body and heart,” and that is perhaps the key to understanding why Mittermüller is quite so assured and so good. Dame Janet was actually in the hall on Friday – she was presenting the Wigmore Medal to the Duke of Kent – and it felt very apt that she was. Mittermüller’s levels of preparation and total preparedness live up to Dame Janet’s assertion, particularly in Ravel’s “Asie”. Dawn Upshaw once said that this song requires the mind of an actor and the memory of a monk. Mittermüller not only rose to both of those challenges, she seemed to revel in them.
There were also moments when one inevitably starts to reflect on where this career trajectory which has started so promisingly might lead in the years ahead. Mittermüller’s opera career is just getting under way – she had a short run this summer as ugly sister Tisbe in Rossini’s Cenerentola in Bregenz – but her Wigmore performance of Richard Strauss’s 1894 song “Heimliche Aufforderung” seemed to open a door on what might (here’s hoping) be a signature operatic role one day, the Composer in “Ariadne auf Naxos”.
Another date to mark in what will surely be a bright future: Anja Mittermüller will be back for her next recital at Wigmore Hall on 12 July 2026 at 3pm.
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