www.linnrecords.com
There are some records
where you listen so spellbound that
comparisons seem beside the point; however
good, however different the alternatives,
the disc you are hearing can only remain
supremely valid. And there are some
discs where you start to bring out the
comparisons almost from the beginning.
I’m afraid that, for
me, this was one of the latter, even
in the opening three linked Heine settings
by Bruno Walter where the comparisons
were actually with other composers,
but I’ll come to that later.
Emma Bell’s voice seems
rich and creamy enough for Strauss,
yet doubts begin early. Is there not
to much squally vibrato? Does she not
revel too much in the easy solution
of a Technicolor splurge in Strauss’s
upward phrases, at the expense of long-term
control? Montserrat Caballé in
Freundliche Vision (1964: RCA
Red Seal 82876 511912) could be thought
almost pedantic in her placing of every
syllable and certainly in Schlechtes
Wetter she seems almost aggressively
concerned to show that a Spanish diva
really can sing Lieder. Yet what a securely
placed, vibrant but steady voice she
had at that stage, rock solid in her
final ascent at the end of the latter
song. Her Traum durch die Dämmerung
is a prima donna’s performance in
the best sense, its arching long lines
maybe less attentive to the accompaniment
below her than in the case of some Lieder
specialists, but always leading the
ear onwards. Alongside this Bell seems
hollow and sketchy. It’s also noticeable
how much more forward and vivid is the
recording quality on the Caballé
disc. Have recording standards, as well
as vocal ones, really declined so much
in the last forty years?
With Das Rosenband
it was the turn of Teresa Cahill,
whose recently reissued 1981/2 Strauss
and Rachmaninov performances (Diversions
24114) aroused
my enthusiasm not long ago. Would
they still stand up? Yes, indeed, for
here was a voice which, if without the
full-organ solidity of Caballé,
was nevertheless steadily, evenly produced,
with the right sumptuousness for Strauss
and a sense of line that leaves Bell
standing. Cahill’s record actually contains
two performances of this song (for reasons
which I explain in my review); though
I was trying to be very careful and
to listen with a critical ear, in the
second of the two performances I was
quite overwhelmed as Cahill began the
last stanza. This is the sort of tingle
factor that Bell just can’t create because
she hasn’t the vocal security (at present)
to do so. A further five of Bell’s selected
songs are also to be found on Cahill’s
disc, and they all tell the same story.
Nachtgang brought
a comparison with a singer closer to
Bell’s own generation, Katarina Karnéus
(EMI CDZ 5 73168 2). Even taking into
account the fact that Karnéus
is a mezzo, it is quite incredible to
what an extent it seems different song,
for Karnéus has such a firmer
sense of line, so much more sense of
the overall shape of the song, which
seems to last half the length (though
it’s actually 6 seconds longer). But
then, Karnéus has a rock-steady
voice production on which to build her
interpretation. Since she is also finely
recorded, it now appears that vocal
and recording standards have not necessarily
declined over the last forty years after
all. Beside either of these three singers,
I’m afraid that Bell sounds vague in
her intentions, technically unprepared
and, frankly, amateurish.
With so few Marx songs
on record, it is a pity that two of
Bell’s should duplicate those chosen
by Karnéus in her selection of
five. Or perhaps it isn’t such a pity,
since the comparison shows that we cannot
give too much credence to the performances
here of the other two. Karnéus’s
more thoughtful approach finds quite
a lot more in Und gestern hat er
mir Rosen gebracht but it is above
all in Hat dich die Liebe berührt
that Karnéus produces a truly
great performance, her heartfelt simplicity
and steady build-up towards the climax
quite transforming the song.
Under the circumstances,
our judgement of Bruno Walter as a composer
must be tentative. Certainly, he dropped
composition early on and, unlike Furtwängler
and Klemperer, neither returned to it
in later life nor attempted to promote
any of his works. He would, I suppose,
have been flattered when Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
took up the three Eichendorff settings
(the group beginning with Des Kindes
Schlaf), and if you want to hear
Walter the composer in his best light,
maybe you should seek out the DF-D recordings,
which drift in and out of the catalogue.
Walter was undoubtedly a warm-hearted
composer with a dab hand at atmospheric
accompaniments (he was a very fine pianist
as well as a great conductor) and a
feeling for soaring vocal phrases which
must be lovely to sing. But with regard
to this latter, as a "sort of composer"
myself, I know how easy it is to launch
into ecstatically upward-soaring Straussian
phrases when you’re not quite sure what
to do next, and how grateful singers
can be to you when you do this! With
all due respect, I fear Walter is often
guilty of these easy solutions, so it
is interesting to compare the opening
Heine mini-cycle Tragödie with
settings of the same poem by Anton Rubinstein
and Stanford (the latter is available
in a not very satisfactory performance
on Hyperion; so far as I know the Rubinstein
is unavailable). Both were full-time
composers in a way Walter wasn’t and
both were classicists who rejected the
easy solution, and this shows in the
clear-cut nature of their themes and
the economy of their workmanship which
enables each song to unfold before the
public with a precise form. They were
variably inspired, it is true, but Stanford’s
surging opening (echoed memorably at
the end, a suggestion that the tragedy
is about to be re-enacted) and Rubinstein’s
haunting final pages surely strike a
higher note than anything in the Walter,
which perhaps tries to hard for its
own good.
The contribution from
pianist Andrew West is excellent, there
is a useful note and texts and English
translations are provided. Having found
the recording not exceptionally vivid,
I should add that I heard it as a straight
CD; maybe on SACD equipment it’s another
story.
Christopher Howell
Emma Bell (soprano), Andrew West (piano)
LINN
CKD 238 [58:33]
