Recovering from Covid-19: a singer's story

A few days before the first national lockdown in the UK, I came down with what I am certain was COVID-19, though as with thousands of others, the lack of testing meant that I never received a test. High fever, chills, headaches, tightness of chest and shortness of breath gave way to abdominal pain, diarrhoea and extreme fatigue. 

At that time, the cluster of gastric symptoms was not highly recognised in the UK, though we now know that mine was just one of the virus’s many possible trajectories. Though the main symptoms eased after a week, it took three more weeks to recover from the fatigue, and even now, 10 months later, I still experience bouts of fatigue and the same feeling of tightness in my chest, though thankfully milder.

I will never forget the feeling of entering a long, dark tunnel when I realised I had the virus, watching my temperature soar and being acutely aware, as a classical singer, of the risks of severe respiratory complications. In 2004, just after a major operation, my wonderful singing teacher Jacqueline Straubinger-Bremar contracted a virus which laid her low for 18 months, the complications of which included aspects of severe acute respiratory syndrome. The virus caused permanent reduction of her lung capacity and permanent vocal damage, ending her singing career. Had she been a few years older, she probably would not have survived.

I will never forget my real, clear-eyed awareness of mortality that first night, for I knew that fit people my age were dying of this, so it could happen to me. I will also never forget my parents praying for me over WhatsApp, asking the Lord to spare my life, after which point the symptoms veered towards the gastric. 

Finally, I will never forget the euphoric freedom and gratitude I felt the first time I left my flat after my self-isolation. Despite the continuing danger, all felt newly made, the world my oyster. The gift of free movement, the blessing of casual interaction with other human beings, even strangers - I felt it all keenly, vividly. 

I have sung Richard Strauss’ masterpiece Four Last Songs often - eight times with orchestra, at last count, and I was scheduled to sing it again with the English Symphony Orchestra in June 2020. That, along with the entire contents of my 2020 concert diary (and those of thousands of other musicians), was wiped away in little over a week as lockdown commenced.

When the ESO’s artistic director Kenneth Woods wrote to ask if I wanted to sing for a socially distanced recording of the Strauss, along with chamber arrangements of Mahler, Schubert and Humperdinck, I leapt at the chance. As one of our lovely cellists put it, it felt like a mirage, an oasis in the middle of a creative wilderness. To get to make live music, and such music! I marvel still.

During the three days of the recording, I was endlessly grateful and astonished that I had the stamina and energy to do two-session days, day after day. I am a passionate singer, giving deeply of myself when I perform, so performance is very taxing for me. I alternately retreated to my dressing room with a mound of snacks and the singer’s arsenal of steamer and hot drinks and walked out of the Wyastone Concert Hall into a stunning Welsh valley that in the current pinch did very well for Strauss’ Alps. Almost drunk with the privilege and pleasure of making music again, and with such ardent, gifted colleagues. Almost assuredly running on adrenalin and prayer, as it took me over a week to recover.

Recording is always an exercise in facing and accepting limitations. You do your best, but there are always time pressures, vocal pressures, cut-offs of many kinds, compromises, thankfully mostly small (the sort that haunt classical musicians but are usually imperceptible to even most of their colleagues). As one of my singing pupils says, ‘My best is good enough’. The act of making - together - is every bit as important as the result, and the result has its own life, apart from my satisfaction in it.

As a singer who has followed a slightly unusual path, choosing do to a PhD instead of an opera course, I know the ambivalence of seeing contemporaries scale other, starrier heights. Wondering if I did the right thing. Giving into the salt-sowing of regret. It took me years to realise that all this exercise did was to steal my joy in the incredible diversity and vibrancy of activity that my particular gifts had opened to me. To me, the Four Last Songs are precious and extraordinary because, looking back at the end of life, Strauss manages to avoid bitterness and to embrace the beauty, the richness and the pathos of what is, of what has been and been given. He has taught me to do the same.

This time, of course, my still-vivid experience of Covid was everywhere in this piece. In Frühling, the almost technicolour, new-minted brightness of the world after self-isolation and illness. In September, the smiling shock and gracious resignation to mortality. In Beim Schlafengehn, the sense of the profound weariness encapsulated in the German word ‘müd’ and the incredible freedom of accepting limitations, including mortality, and feeling the soul float above the tumult, ‘there to live deep and a thousand-fold’, even in the midst of a pandemic, even in the crashing-down.

And finally, the wondrous serenity of Im Abendrot. I have not married, so I have no first-hand experience of the sort of 50-year human partnership Strauss drew upon. As a professing Christian for whom faith and relationship with God is enfolded into every part of my being and experience, however, I bring to this song a different lived experience of faithfulness, no less precious to me.

There is a moment in the song where the poet imagines dusk falling on the upper reaches of the mountains:

Rings sich die Täller neigen;

Es dunkelt schon die Luft.

The valleys fold themselves around us;

Already the air darkens.

The end is far closer than we’d imagined, and the feeling of both solitude and gratitude is amplified. Against this, two larks fly up suddenly, enjoying the final thermals of the day.

Tritt her, und lass sie zwirren;

Bald ist es schlafenszeit

Wait here, and let them fly;

Soon it will be time to sleep.

Let the bright young things fly; savour what is and has been. In a year when so much in my industry has been lost, some, perhaps, never to return, I think we have all sat in that darkening air and wondered when and if we, too, would ‘fly again’, or whether it was ours now to sit and remember, to make our peace with a passing era like the High Elves of Middle Earth.

With the exception of Humperdinck’s Abendsegen, most of the other works on Visions of Childhood deal with a life cut short in one way or another, by hunger (‘Die irdische Leben’, ‘Die himmlische Leben’), by betrayal (‘Die Forelle’) and by illness or accident in youth (‘Death and the Maiden’). What always amazes me about the Schubert is how clearly it images the stages of grief, but there is no bargaining with death. Only surrender, in varying degrees of peace and grace.

The irony is that, in some ways, I feel I am now just hitting my stride. Thoughts around creative community and the vital nature of the shared experience of music-making and active listening and participation are coalescing, and new ideas and re-imaginings of old models seem to come fast and quick.

Back to the larks and the gift of presence. To me, the gift of Covid has been the gift of life. Like the ‘thorn in the flesh’ mentioned by St Paul, I do see it as a curious sort of grace, forcing me to slow down, be more mindful. The air is darkening, yes. I have learned to say to my soul, You are not all you’d hoped, and now you probably never will be. Time is always shorter than you imagine. Savour. Take time to sit and be with what is.

Don’t waste your energy on chasing the favour of those who cannot see you and never will, because you don’t fit their definitions. Embrace grief with one hand and gratitude with the other. Continue to live and love deeply.

I hope I will always carry with me the knowledge that my life is a gift, to be savoured and shared, whatever it holds, be it bright sunshine and birdsong or twilight and sorrow.

April Fredrick’s new recording with the English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods - Visions of Childhood and Four Last Songs - is out on Nimbus Records on 5 February: https://orcd.co/_visionsofchildhood