I think we must start
with an expression of delight at the
unhackneyed choice of songs for this
recital. Here is a young singer making
her name with a major album of 25 songs
of which nine are by Bruno Walter and
four by Joseph Marx. Certainly there
are twelve by Richard Strauss but at
least we are seeing a more open approach.
Rather this than another tired anthology
of the usual ‘greats’.
Bruno Walter (originally
Bruno Walter Schlesinger) is known,
to the exclusion of everything else,
as a conductor and also as pupil and
friend of Gustav Mahler. True to pattern,
Grove V does not even mention his compositional
activities. In fact he wrote two symphonies,
Das Siegesfest for soli, chorus
and orchestra, a string quartet, a piano
quintet, a piano trio, a violin sonata
and various songs. You can hear his
violin sonata played by Philippe Graffin
and Pascal Devoyon on Hyperion CDA67220
review
- It is coupled with the Goldmark suite
for violin and piano.
Walter's songs are
presented in three groups on this Linn
disc. Tragödie I, II and
III are Heine settings using terse and
melancholic poems about love, elopement,
loneliness and death. For me they
were quite a discovery. No wonder Bell
chose them to start the collection.
The first is ironically cheerful and
not that far distant from Warlock's
My Own Country. Tragödie
II is a beautiful song using a chiming
downward-stepping high piano figuration
- cascading, glistening and starry.
It recalls the tinselly silver of Strauss's
Presentation of the Rose from
Rosenkavalier. The final Tragödie
pictures two artless young lovers beneath
the Linden weeping and not knowing why.
These are songs of the most fragile
beauty and are spun by singer and pianist
with utmost sensitivity. Remarkable
too is Walter's Die Lerche (Lark)
setting anonymous words but in a more
harmonically adventurous style than
he adopted for the Heine trilogy. For
yet more variety the very attractive
Walter setting of Elfe romps
along to a calypso rhythm. The last
group of three Walter songs are settings
of Julius Wolff (1834-1910). These are
more lusty than the others with a definite
Tannhauser exuberance and triumphalism
in Liebeslust (tr. 25).
The music of Joseph
Marx is one of my hobby-horses. His
works are now beginning to receive part
of their due. His epic Herbstsymphonie
for example is
to be performed in Graz in Austria
on 24/25 October 2005. His songs are
lushly romantic and lavishly florid
including writing that would sit happily
in an opera: for example in this case
try Traumgekrönt. The pianist
is also fully tested. The notes remind
us that most of Marx's songs were written
during the period 1908-1912.
The Strauss songs will
be familiar to a wider audience. Highlights
include Bell's delicately, purely and
enchantingly sustained altissimo on
the words 'in den frieden' in Freundliche
Vision. There's also the playful
Mutterandelei and Hat gesagt-bleibt
nicht dabei referencing Strauss's
best flighty operatic vintage - a nice
contrast with the moody rose-romance
of the other songs. Epheu (Ivy)
the third song in the complete Madchenblumen
op. 22 (1-4), all included here, is
an acqueously rippling setting. That
watery moonlit delicacy carries over
into the magical Wasserose. Schlechtes
wetter is carefree and must have
pleased Viennese audiences with its
sentimental heurige spirit.
The helpful notes are
by Sandy Matheson. The sung texts are
printed in full with idiomatic English
translations. Many of these are by Emily
Ezust who has done so much through her
website to increase the accessibility
of the world's vast store of lieder
- lieder
texts and translations.
A couple of presentational
criticisms. The booklet would have been
even more helpful had the poems and
translations been linked to the track
numbers. There was also a serious problem
with my review copy as pages 11-14 were
missing. You should check.
If you would like to
sample the excellence of these recordngs
then try Strauss's Traum durch die
Dåmmerung and especially that
fastidiously and softly floated high
note on the word 'Licht'. My one reservation
came when in Das Rosenband there
is every appearance of the engineer
shying the recording level in the face
of an extremely dramatic fortissimo.
The pity is that more
songs were not included - the playing
time is less than an hour. I would have
welcomed more Marx and Walter. So far
as Walter is concerned we have opp.
11 nos 4-6 and 12 nos 3-4 and 6. Whatever
happened to the missing ones. Are they
that poor?
I should add that listened
to this disc on a standard CD player
so cannot comment on its SACD performance.
This is an intensely
attractive and thoughtfully constructed
recital.
Rob Barnett
see also review
by Christopher Howell
Emma
Bell (soprano); Andrew West (piano) 
LINN
CKD 238 [58:33] 
