If you have a chance to sample before
purchase [available
from Naxos
or Amazon
sites], try the "Schäfers
Klagelied" which just about sums
it up; there is some beautiful piano
playing (from a pianist whose contribution
to Christiane Iven’s very fine disc
of Mayrhofer lieder in this series has
already been admired) and the vocal
response is most sensitive. But come
a few more dramatic moments and the
upper notes acquire an unpleasantly
harsh sound. Elsewhere on the disc we
can hear that the high notes are clean
and true when they are soft but gain
this piercing quality when more pressure
is put on them.
Ah well, you will say,
not many of Schubert’s songs are dramatic
anyway. Maybe so, but if you have to
go through a whole CD with a singer
slightly over-parted by the dramatic
ones, it’s remarkable how many of them
there seem to be. Still, all is not
lost for there are also a tidy few soft
and gentle ones that emerge "unerupted
all round", as my dentist used
to say when I was much younger. Indeed,
looking around for comparisons I found
I preferred Kalpers and Kehring in the
second "Am Flusse" setting
to Fischer-Dieskau and Moore (DG), who
are surprisingly cavalier with it. But
that is very much the exception; in
"Geheimes", "Ester Verlust"
and the second "Jägers Abendlied",
just to name three, the Holy Writ as
laid down by DF-D finds so much more
in the music and words. And, admirable
as Kehring is, he can be a mite aggressive
at times, as I found when I took down
the lovely performance of "Liebhaber
in allen Gestalten" by Edith Wiens
and Rudolph Jansen (CBC) and found the
pianist radiating sheer delight in the
music.
So all in all this
is not one of those Naxos discs that
would be a bargain at any price, but
it’s a serviceable affair if you want
to have some of Schubert’s best-known
Goethe settings together with some of
the rarest, of which the two unfinished
ones, "Mahomets Gesang" and
"Johanna Sebus", have quite
extraordinarily elaborate and thrilling
piano parts. You get full texts and
English translations and the note by
Joachim Landkanner, if nothing like
the spread we get from Graham Johnson
in the Hyperion series, is very informative.
Among other things it comments that
"Wilkommen und Abschied" illustrates
the word "Glück" (happiness)
with "a shining C major".
Would it did, Mr. Landkanner, for it’s
sung in D here and the lower key might
well have spared us some of the more
unpleasant sounds on offer. DF-D, by
the way, gives us the "shining
C major", but he’s a baritone and
I wish he’d taken it down to B flat!
Why do singers have to push their voices
a notch above what is comfortable, especially
in lieder which it is perfectly legitimate
to transpose?
The unevenness of this
Naxos series is making it very difficult
to recommend it globally as a way of
exploring Schubert lieder; a few have
been very fine and worth any price,
some have not been worth even the modest
asking price, while this one is somewhere
in the middle. Overall I feel the Hyperion
series is more reliable and justifies
the extra outlay if you can afford it.
Christopher Howell
see also review
by Michael Cookson
For reviews of other releases in this
series,
see the Naxos
Deutsche Schubert-Lied Edition page
Johannes Kalpers (tenor), Burkhard Kehring
(piano) 