Phyllis Bryn-Julson has a deservedly high reputation as a concert singer, able to project the most complex contemporary music with a rare combination of accuracy and sensitivity. These qualities in themselves do not guarantee equal success in the more intimate, refined world of Lieder, so I am glad to report that the satisfaction level on this Schoenberg disc is high, helped by a good recording and a strong contribution from the pianist Ursula Oppens.
The cabaret songs recorded here were not actually performed when Schoenberg worked at the Uberbrettl Theatre in Berlin in 1901, and they are as much in the tradition of Hugo Wolf's comic settings of Morike and Goethe as of more popular music. It follows that the contrast between them and Schoenberg's settings of Dehmel, Schlaf (Op. 2) and Stefan George (Op. 15) is not as great as might at first be thought. Yet the two sets of Lieder are vastly superior as music. Op. 2 contains one of the finest of all German songs, ''Schenk mir deinen Goldenen Kamm'', which is perhaps best suited to a male voice. Certainly, it seems rather understated in Phyllis Bryn-Julson's performance, with a feeling of refinement rather than of open yearning. But she cannot be accused of lack of emotional intensity in the 15 songs of The Book of the Hanging Gardens. Even if a voice with darker timbres might ideally be preferable, the touch of shrillness in the upper register is well compensated for by her ability to shape the wide-ranging lines and articulate (with only rare hints of less than perfect German vowels) the allusive texts. Together Bryn-Julson and Oppens reinforce the visionary quality of music that enters fully into the new Schoenbergian world of atonality without losing contact with the great expressive tradition of German song that nurtures it.'