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I’m afraid I’m going
to start with an issue that some readers
might consider marginal, that of the
transpositions.
Although Heine’s poet
is a man and we normally hear Dichterliebe
sung by a male singer, Schumann actually
wrote the cycle for a dramatic soprano.
That being so, the vocal range is a
little surprising since it sits in the
middle octave for much of the time and,
apart from the optional A in "Iche
grolle nicht", goes no higher than
a G. Assuming that Schumann knew what
he was doing, it is evident that he
didn’t want "top-notey" singing
(the aforesaid A being the one slight
concession), but rather to permit the
sort of intimate, self-communing delivery
a singer can only manage in the "comfortable"
part of his/her register. It follows,
then, that when transposing it for a
baritone, the transposition should be
sufficient to carry the music into the
baritone’s "comfortable" register.
Generally speaking, the "low voice"
edition of a song originally written
for high voice will be a minor third
lower, though there is no hard and fast
rule and many singers like to decide
for themselves. In the case of Dichterliebe
the already not-so-high tessitura
tends to tempt baritones (or publishers)
to transpose it as little as possible.
Loges starts out a tone lower, then
at "Ich grolle nicht" he switches
to the original key (without attempting
the high A); he then continues in the
original key until nearly the end, transposing
the last two down a tone.
Puzzled, I turned to
Gerhaher (RCA) and Maltman (Hyperion),
just to mention two of the most recent
versions, and found an almost identical
situation (and they both manage a splendid
high A in "Ich grolle nicht");
Gerhaher’s difference is that he has
"Und wüssten’s die Blumen"
down a third, Maltman’s that
he also has "Im Rhein" in
the original key.
Does this actually
affect what the man in the street hears?
I think it does in two ways. Firstly,
it is probable if not certain that Schumann
worked out an overall key sequence for
the cycle, which thereby gets destroyed,
and I had always supposed that, when
transposing a song cycle, the hard and
fast rule is that all songs are to be
transposed equally. You don’t have to
have technical knowledge to feel a jolt
if the key relationship between two
consecutive songs is not the one you
usually hear, especially if it is less
logical than the one the composer wrote.
Secondly, irrespectively
of how easily the baritone manages the
tessitura, if he is singing in the same
key as the tenor (as all these three
do for about half the cycle) he will
produce a different kind of singing
because he is in the upper range of
his voice. He may mix in a touch of
head voice and produce a magically luminous
sound, but is it the sound Schumann
wanted when he wrote these notes for
the "comfortable" range of
a high voice?
If these matters have
come to the fore with regard to the
present recording it is because Maltman
and Gerhaher are sufficient masters
of their upper range for my ear to accept
what it heard and concentrate on their
interpretations. Quite frankly, Loge’s
top F – and he has a lot of them to
sing – sounds husky in piano and hoarse
in forte, rather a blight on an otherwise
warmly resonant voice, and I was bound
to wonder why he didn’t stick to a tone-lower
transposition all the way through, or
even a semitone lower still. As a once
and for all example, try the rising
phrase which opens Brahms’s "An
ein Veilchen". If you think the
top note lovely then you can buy the
disc without fear, though if you have
the opportunity to compare all three
baritones in the phrase "Da ist
meinen Herzen" from the first Dichterliebe
song you will surely have to admit
that the other two sound at their ease
up there while Loges does not.
That said, Loges is
a sensitive interpreter, beautifully
recorded with a warm toned piano behind
him – all too literally sometimes since
I noted just a few too many occasions
for a record where the piano lags fractionally
after the voice in simple chordal accompaniments.
He pays particular attention to the
words but sometimes, as in no. 3, this
leads him to disrupt the line. Under
the circumstances, while recognizing
that there is much of beauty here, I
can only repeat my recommendation for
the other two, Gerhaher more impulsively
present, Maltman more magically reflective.
And I must say that a rehearing of the
classic interpretation by tenor Aksel
Schiøtz, whether in the famous
1946 recording with Moore or the slightly-fresher
voiced 1942 version, recently discovered
(both available from Danacord), revealed
an inspired simplicity, an art concealing
art and a sheer nobility of utterance
which modern interpreters might do well
to bear in mind. Schumann left a number
of these songs without a tempo indication
and a rehearing of Schiøtz and
other much-loved tenors of the past
also reveals that there is a wider range
of options than might be supposed –
Dermota’s slow, caressing "Ein
Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen",
for example.
Maltman’s Dichterliebe
is part of Hyperion’s ongoing complete
Schumann cycle, which all lovers of
lieder should be collecting; Gerhaher
also couples some lesser-known Schumann.
From Loges we get some later Heine settings
by Schumann and then a group of Franz
songs, all settings of poems included
by Schumann in Dichterliebe.
This might actually be the main reason
for getting the disc.
I had always fondly
imagined that the 54 Lieder by Franz
published by Kistler, of which I acquired
a copy in a Victorian binding many years
ago, represented all this composer’s
songs, or at least all that mattered.
It proves that neither was the case;
I was quite bowled over by "Im
wunderschönen Monat Mai",
which loses nothing by beginning almost
identically with Schumann’s, and equally
aroused by the following two. But I
have to say that "Ich hab’ im Traume
geweinet" tries hard without coming
within a thousand leagues of Schumann’s
pregnant silences and, while Franz’s
"Im Rhein" is possibly easier
for both performers and listeners to
grasp, the Schumann is ultimately more
rewarding. In the end it shows that,
the greater the composer, the fewer
notes he needs.
Having pursued the
Heine theme it is perhaps a pity not
to have continued it with Brahms. His
Heine settings are admittedly few, but
others by Franz could have been included.
Still, his chosen songs allow Loges
to show his paces in two of Brahms’s
most famous melodies – his hushed singing
of the second stanza of that lullaby
(op. 49/4) showing him at his finest.
Christopher Howell
Stephan Loges (baritone), Alexander Schmalcz
(piano) 
