Detlef Roth has been
working regularly in European opera
houses over the last ten years but,
while he has a voice rich enough for
Wolfram he has also sung Papageno and
is well-attuned to the nuances required
of lieder singing. It is a splendidly
rich voice, resonant in the lower range
but free and untroubled in the higher
notes. You can hear this immediately
in "Der Unglückliche",
a wide-ranging song which goes on from
a deceptively tranquil opening to achieve
high drama, while "Die Allmacht"
is a tour de force of powerfully involved
singing. The many gentler songs, on
the other hand, are caressed with a
real sense of line and without ever
resorting to dubious tricks such as
the head voice. Indeed, as I listened
to this splendidly resonant voice with
its innate musicality and sensitivity
towards the words without undue fuss
over them, a very famous name came to
my mind – Hans Hotter. Since Ulrich
Eisenlohr, the mastermind behind Naxos’s
complete Schubert project, accompanies
splendidly, this is clearly one of the
high points of the series.
Here, then, is the
second of the volumes dedicated to Schubert’s
settings of poems by his Austrian contemporaries,
and very rare material it all is, I
don’t recollect ever having heard any
of them. Yet all are attractive if without
quite displacing in my mind the well-tried
favourites. "Die Unglückliche"
is one that maybe deserves a regular
place in our programmes, and "Die
Allmacht" is a useful addition
to the small repertoire of lieder on
religious subjects – it would make a
good pairing in recital with "Litanei".
For the rest, what a treasure trove
is Schubert, even relatively minor Schubert.
By the way, this disc contains none
of those interminable ballads which
weigh heavily on some other discs in
the series and it also contains a curiosity
in the form of Schubert’s one and only
melodrama – "Abschied". Roth’s
speaking voice is almost as beautiful
as his singing voice.
Those who are collecting
automatically this very uneven series
will be thrilled by this latest addition;
if you have so far collected just a
few CDs of Schubert’s best-known songs
then here is a splendid disc of rarer
ones to branch out with. But, so good
are the performances that even if you
have collected all these songs in the
Hyperion edition, you might well consider
getting this as well.
As usual Eisenlohr
provides helpful notes, plus texts and
translations. Just to prove I really
was listening, the third verse of "Der
Sänger am Felsen" sung here
is not the one printed in the booklet.
Christopher Howell
For reviews of other releases in this
series,
see the Naxos
Deutsche Schubert-Lied Edition page
Detlef Roth (baritone), Ulrich Eisenlohr
(piano)