The premise for this
enterprising and extremely well-filled
two-disc set from Bridge is that the
history and variety of the song-cycle
is deeper and more complex than received
and critical opinion often has it.
As soprano Georgine
Resick comments in her booklet note,
the "first true example of the
song-cycle form is generally agreed
to be Ludwig van Beethoven’s An die
ferne Geliebte, composed in 1816."
But as she rightly points out, song
sets and groups of linked or inter-related
songs - whether or not one cares to
dignify them with the term song-cycle
- date back to the time of Monteverdi
in the early seventeenth century at
least, almost two centuries earlier.
"Beethoven’s cycle was innovative,"
she continues, "in that it was
composed with transitional musical material
leading from one song to the next, requiring
an uninterrupted performance" by
the performers, in this case one singer
and one pianist. Resick also aims to
widen the reach of the form beyond Schubert’s
and Schumann’s masterly sets, which
have eclipsed later developments.
Her set seeks to start
redressing the balance with twelve cycles
of varying lengths, types and formats
from composers from France to Russia,
concentrating on works that are, at
least nowadays, forgotten or neglected.
Her selection is certainly individual,
though the overly critical may find
the absence of a cycle dating from before
An die ferne Geliebte weakens
part of her argument.
The first disc is devoted
to "The Early German Song Cycle"
and is intended to highlight the variety
of the genre outside the output of those
composers already mentioned. Cornelius
Kreutzer’s Wander Lieder rightly
leads the way, not quite the earliest
work on the disc but one which arguably
had a great impact on Schubert. The
texts, of Ludwig Uhland’s seminal poems
of wandering youth, are also vital in
making this an influential cycle. As
a template for the genre it is demonstrably
as important as Beethoven’s. One can
hear resonances of it in the cycles
of Mahler and Britten not least - whose
song sets are presumably too well known
to feature here. With a musical language
that seems to fuse late Mozartian charm
with early Romantic ardour, the nine
songs of Wander Lieder — only
one of which is available in a rival
version — are full of appeal, nowhere
more so than in the very first, Lebewohl.
Even earlier is the concluding item
on Disc 1, Weber’s Die Temperamente
bei dem Verluste der Geliebten.
This is a vivid set of near operatic
character studies for Der Freischutz
- which would follow soon afterwards
- based on the old notion of the four
temperaments. This type of set was already
old in Weber’s day; Resick calls it
a "four-affect song cycle".
His treatment of it is far from reverential,
infusing considerable humour into his
four character-type sketches of sanguine,
melancholic, choleric and phlegmatic
men who have lost their lovers.
In between these two
highly different works lie three of
varying quality from the middle decades
of the nineteenth century, two of them
post-dating the end of Schumann’s creative
period. Sigmund Thalberg was, alongside
Liszt, the pre-eminent pianist of the
time and a respected composer. His 6
Deutsche Lieder are early, written
when he was 21, and set poems by Heine.
The cycle illustrates his strengths
as a composer. The songs - the only
ones of his currently available - are
well crafted, especially the accompaniments
as one would expect from a pianist.
The set as a whole is well-proportioned
but also highlights why his music fell
into deep neglect in the twentieth century:
there is no really distinct voice here,
nothing that says ‘This is Thalberg’
in the way that the music of Liszt or
Wagner does. More individual are the
six numbers of Peter Cornelius’s Brautlieder
(1856-9) however deep in the shadow
of Schumann, as well as Liszt and Wagner,
they lie. Cornelius wrote his own texts
which may account for the way music
and words fit together like a hand in
glove. The Brautlieder is also
unusual for a cycle of love songs at
this time, although musings on love
might be a better description, in that
they were written not just for a woman
to sing but present a woman’s perspective,
an idea no doubt derived from Schumann
and Frauenlieben und -Leben.
So too does the final cycle of the first
disc, Adolf Jensen’s 7 Gesänge
aus dem Spanischen Liederbuch. Jensen
too was a fervent admirer of Schumann,
Liszt and Wagner and like Thalberg wrote
a number of song-cycles. The poems come
from the same collection made famous
in lieder circles by Wolf at the end
of the nineteenth century and again
present a female view, though rather
more unhappily as the subject concerns
her ill-fated affair with a soldier.
Jensen’s settings are at their best
when more reflective — such as the concluding
Dereinst, Gedanke mein, wirst ruhig
sein or the fourth number, Sie
blasen zum Abmarsch with its prominent
but curious allusion to the scherzo
of Beethoven’s Fifth — rather than in
more histrionic numbers like the sixth,
Es rauben Gedanken den Schlaf mir
whose quasi-operatic nature misfires.
The second disc casts
its net much wider geographically —
with cycles from France, Poland, Russia,
Switzerland, Sweden and Italy — though
not in time. All seven date from between
1892 (Cui) and 1926 (Honegger) as opposed
to the 44-year difference between the
Weber and Jensen songs on Disc A. Culturally,
the journey Resick takes through these
songs is more complicated still. Jean
Cras — a disciple of Duparc who emerges
as a lost impressionist — set translations
into French of Persian originals in
the five songs of his Robaiyat de
Omar Khayyam; Honegger did likewise
in his three "La Petite Sirène"
Chansons but from Hans Christian
Andersen’s Danish. Malipiero’s brief
triptych Keepsake has an English
title, as do the individual songs, and
sets three poems of longing in French
by Jean-Aubry, creating an intimate
yet uneasy atmosphere. The Four Sonnets
by Russian-born César Cui — of
French and Lithuanian extraction — have
texts in Polish, while the Pole Karol
Szymanowski set a variety of German
poets in his exhilarating Bunte Lieder,
a product of his short-lived Germanophile
period. Only Ture Rangström (Swedish)
and Emile Paladilhe (French) stick to
their own tongue!
So how does Georgine
Resick make her way through this modern-day
Babel? Well, the four different languages
pose no problems for her in terms of
diction. This is no surprise as she
speaks — according to her biography
— five languages and sings in five more.
By the way the back cover erroneously
proclaims that she sings here in five
languages. Ms Resick does indeed sing
on these discs in German, French, Polish
and Swedish but not in Italian.
A noted Mozart performer
Ms Resick’s voice seems best suited
to the lighter lyric cycles by Kreutzer,
Cornelius, Cras and Paladilhe, while
Thalberg’s and Cui’s sit very comfortably
for her also. She clearly relishes the
melodramatic opportunities afforded
by Weber’s temperamental studies as
well as Honegger’s miniatures. Some
of the fuller textures of a number of
the Jensen songs find her in less convincing
form and her voice tends to the shrill
in some of the more exposed high writing,
as in the second (Solstänk)
of Rangström’s ten-song group.
However, she carries off the sweep and
range of Szymanowski’s Bunte Lieder
- one of the few to have a currently
available alternative recording, on
Channel Classics - with skill. On the
whole she has the measure of the marvellous
Rangström cycle. Why this last,
with its strong affinities to Sibelius,
is not better known is a mystery, but
the same could be said of almost all
the cycles here, most particularly those
by Kreutzer, Cornelius, Szymanowski,
Cui and Paladilhe. This last is perhaps
the most disarming of all the works
gathered here, a collection of apparently
disparate musings on various mostly
natural subjects that at first seemed
to border on the trite. It is also the
longest of the sets, although it could
be argued it is but part of a larger
composition. It at first struck me as
a curious conclusion to the programme.
However, I warmed to its subtle charms
on repeated hearings and there is no
denying the composer’s genius for wistful
melody. In fact, it makes the perfect
finale.
I should add a word
or two on the two excellent accompanists.
On Disc A, Andrew Willis plays a copy
by Neupert of a Dulcken fortepiano in
the Kreutzer and Weber cycles, an instrument
which sounds wholly authentic and splendidly
so. I prefer it rather to the 1841 Bösendorfer
grand which he uses for the Cornelius,
Thalberg and Jensen sets; in this last
it achieves an almost honky-tonk tone
which I found a touch distracting. His
playing of both instruments is exemplary
as is that of Warren Jones on a modern
piano, a Steinway D for those interested
in such things, for Disc B’s stylistically
much more diverse fare. Bridge’s recordings,
engineered by Dennis Hopson (Disc A)
and Judith Sherman (Disc B) are close
without being claustrophobic, clear
without being over-bright. Given the
unusual repertoire, the fine level of
performance and production, this is
a very desirable issue.
Guy Rickards
for
details
Georgine Resick (soprano), Warren Jones
(piano) 
