Beethoven's Songs
Beethoven's Songs
Gramophone Choice
Sechs Gellert Lieder, Op 48. Lieder – Op 52: No 3, Das Liedchen von der Ruhe; No 4, Mailied; Op 75: No 2, Neue Liebe, neues Leben; No 3, Aus Goethes Faust; Op 83: No 1, Wonne der Wehmut; No 2, Sehnsucht. Adelaide, Op 46. An die Hoffnung, Op 94. An die ferne Geliebte, Op 98. Klage, WoO113. Der Liebende, WoO139. An die Geliebte, WoO140
Stephan Genz (bar) Roger Vignoles (pf)
Hyperion CDA67055 (69' · DDD · T/t) Buy from Amazon
Here is young baritone Stephan Genz in the first bloom of his youthful prime. Beethoven’s setting of Goethe’s ‘Mailied’, with its lightly breathed, springing words, could have been written with Genz in mind. Roger Vignoles contributes an irresistible bounding energy and even a sense of mischief to one of Beethoven’s most spontaneous yet subtle settings, ‘Neue Liebe, neues Leben’, and an elusive sense of yearning is created as the voice tugs against the piano line in ‘Sehnsucht’. The six Gellert Lieder form the centrepiece of this recital: Beethoven’s song-cycle, An die ferne Geliebte, its grand finale. The intensity of Genz’s cry ‘Is there a God?’ in ‘An die Hoffnung’, at the start of the disc, gives some indication of the gravitas he brings to his firmly enunciated ‘spiritual songs’ of Gellert. Genz and Vignoles have here reinstated a number of the original verses omitted by Beethoven in the first printed edition, creating a greater sense of balance and proportion within the set. The concluding song-cycle is quite simply one of the best performances currently available. Fresh and bright of tone, awe-filled and beautifully paced and scaled, Genz’s singing is modulated exquisitely from song to song by Vignoles’s sentient piano accompaniment.
Additional Recommendations
Beethoven An die ferne Geliebte Schubert Schwanengesang
Matthias Goerne (bar) Alfred Brendel (pf)
Decca 475 6011DH (72' · DDD · T/t) Recorded live 2003. Buy from Amazon
Matthias Goerne and Alfred Brendel formed one of the great Lieder partnerships of the day. The sympathy between them goes beyond skilful ensemble, and beyond shared enjoyment of the wealth of illustration in Schubert, into a deep understanding of the poetry as he composed it. There is no surprise that these two thoughtful artists should produce powerful performances of the most inward-looking Heine songs – the suffering power of ‘Der Atlas’, the misery from which the harmony allows no escape in ‘Die Stadt’, the terror of ‘Der Doppelgänger’. In its beauty, their shared phrasing springs from an understanding of the meaning of each poem, so that the lighter ones are scarcely less affecting. ‘Das Fischermädchen’ has a slightly knowing lilt, catching Heine’s typical irony in the girl’s false wooing. In ‘Der Abschied’ Goerne’s young man sings happily as he sets off while Brendel’s merry trot tells us that the horse has caught his mood. Their mutual understanding completely solves such a difficult song as ‘Kriegers Ahnung’. And the Beethoven cycle moves in a steady progress not into the usual triumphant assertion but into a warmth of belief that song may truly join the parted lovers. Music-making of genius.
Als die Geliebte sich trennen wollte, WoO132. An die Geliebte, WoO140. Vier Arietten und ein Duett, Op 82. Das Geheimnis, WoO145. In questa tomba oscura, WoO133. Der Kuss, Op 128. Sechs Gellert Lieder, Op 48. Acht Lieder, Op 52. Sechs Lieder, Op 75. Der Mann von Wort, Op 99. Sehnsucht, WoO134. Sehnsucht, WoO146. Seufzer eines Ungeliebten und Gegenliebe, WoO188
Ann Murray (mez) Roderick Williams (bar) Iain Burnside (pf)
Signum SIGCD139 (87' · DDD · T/t) Buy from Amazon
Beethoven was a reluctant song composer, avowedly frustrated by the limitations of the human voice – and, one suspects, the genre’s limited scope for motivic-symphonic development. Yet he still left over 80 songs, ranging from agreeable trifles and Italianate scenas to the gravely majestic Gellert Lieder and the song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte. Mirroring Beethoven’s life, the distant, unattainable beloved is a recurrent obsession here, whether in three settings of ‘An die Geliebte’ or four of Mignon’s yearning ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’, the last surely in Schubert’s mind when he composed his famous setting of 1826. Elsewhere we have ingenuous quasi-folksongs, the sombre ‘In questa tomba oscura’, and a clutch of comic songs, by turns lusty, viciously satirical (Mephistopheles’s ‘Song of the Flea’ from Faust) or coyly erotic (‘Der Kuss’).
Two thirds of the numbers on this pair of CDs go to Roderick Williams, whose clean, mellifluous timbre, firm legato and expressive diction are well nigh ideal. The Gellert Lieder can be a bit of a bore when performed as lofty hymns: Williams sings them as personal dramas of the soul. At the other end of the spectrum he sings a slyly lubricious ‘Der Kuss’, colouring and timing to perfection, characterises the ‘Song of the Flea’ with gusto, and even brings off the potentially tedious ‘Urians Reise um die Welt’, a 14-verse travelogue related by a blinkered bore.
Ann Murray is, as ever, a thoughtful interpreter; and when she sings softly – as in her touching performances of the ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’ settings or ‘An den fernen Geliebten’ – she gives pleasure. At mezzo-forte and above her tone tends to grow squally – marring, say, her deeply felt ‘Kennst du das Land’ and ‘Liebes-Klage’. This proviso aside, these discs offer many unsuspected delights, enhanced throughout by Iain Burnside’s vividly imagined and, where appropriate, witty keyboard commentaries and epilogues.
