CPO’s ‘complete edition’ of Pfitzner’s songs is evidently going to be very complete. Several of the songs in this first volume are juvenile works that Pfitzner never published; one or two have only recently been found. He did allow the publication of the six Jugendlieder when they were discovered in 1930, four decades and more after he wrote them, but the title suggests that he viewed them with some indulgence. In fact when, after well over half an hour’s listening, you reach Pfitzner’s very first published song (Op. 2 No. 1), there is a distinct feeling of ‘at last we’re getting somewhere’. Often, in the earlier songs, all he seems to lack is simplicity of utterance, but very frequently that quality is precisely what his chosen texts need. Werners Lied, the words borrowed from Viktor Nessler’s opera, The trumpeter of Sackingen, cries out for folk-like directness, with its repeated, touching refrain, but Pfitzner frowns darkly and quite misses the point. Nearly all the Jugendlieder suffer from this same fault, only the sixth of them finding a manner, rather akin to Mahler’s Knaben Wunderhorn settings, that conveys the poem instead of glumly brooding upon it.
There are exceptions – a very early, charmingly lilting Serenade, and one or two where the young Pfitzner’s glowering does suit the poem of his choice – but on the whole the worthwhile songs are the ones with opus numbers. These are often sparer and simpler, though in Op. 3 there are signs that Pfitzner is getting ready to write bigger and bolder things. A curious feature is his ability to take texts of negligible literary value and turn them into memorable images: the embarrassingly bad poem of Op. 2 No. 3 becomes evocative, even touching in his hands and the artless, folk-like Op. 2 No. 4 becomes artful in the best sense. ‘Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer’ (Op. 2 No. 6), a text familiar from Brahms’s setting, is beautifully tender, and when in Op. 3 he begins to choose better poets (Ruckert and Geibel) we sense a major song-writer developing.
Most of the songs are shared between Schmidt’s dark baritone and the elegant, light tenor of Pregardien: both excellent. Kaufmann’s more fragile voice is less interesting, but all three pianists are good. The recordings are rather close, in what sounds like quite a small room.'