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Fremde Heimat
Rafael Fingerlos (baritone)
Sascha El Mouissi (piano)
Rec. 11-14 June 2019, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Studio 2
Sung texts enclosed but no translations
OEHMS CLASSICS OC 1711 [53:31]

The young Austrian baritone Rafael Fingerlos has made himself a name during the last few years both as opera singer – since the 2016/2017 season he is a member of the ensemble at the Vienna State Opera – and as a lieder singer, where he regularly appears with Sascha El Mouissi. My first encounter with them was also a fascinating lieder disc recorded in 2016 with world premiere recordings of songs by Robert Fürstenthal (review), one song of his is also included in the present programme. It is titled Reiselied (Travel song) and might just as well have been the title of the whole collection, since travelling is the theme, “simply the desire to go out in the world” as Fingerlos says in his liner notes. And the journey is not only geographic but also a travel in time. Peter Warlock’s Rest, sweet nymphs for instance harks back to Francis Pilkington (c. 1565 – 1638), while Albin Fries’s setting of Goethe’s Ûber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh was composed around 2011. Generally Fingerlos and El Mouissi avoid too well known songs – Schubert’s Der Musensohn and Wandrers Nachtlied and Richard Strauss’s Zueignung are the exceptions – and have dug out interesting alternatives.

The opening song is the first song in Brahms’s Die schöne Magelone, which is fairly rarely performed and recorded. And it is a youthfully exuberant Brahms we meet here: energetic, powerful and harmonically bold and a riveting start to the journey when the traveller mounts his horse “to fly through the world”. The first halt is Dehmel’s Die stille Stadt, resting in a valley, shrouded in fog, and the young Alma Schindler paints the town in ghostlike, shimmering colours, liberally seasoned with dissonances. Composed the year before she met Gustav Mahler she was harmonically bolder than her husband-to-be. A pity she wasn’t allowed to develop her art further. When we move on the traveller has already left his steed behind and continues on foot. He reaches a new town, a friendly town, which Mörike describes in glowing colours, he hears golden bells in the distance and a chorus of nightingales and Hugo Wolf savours the atmosphere in his many-faceted tonal language. In the end the wanderer is euphoric:
I am as if drunk, led astray –
O Muse, you have touched my heart
With a breath of love!
As the poem says in Richard Stokes’s translation.

And love is what the wanderer finds. In the next song, Nachtgang, he walks through the peaceful, mild night, arm-in-arm, deeply enamoured. The poem is by Bierbaum and Richard Strauss’s setting breathes happiness. But the yearning to continue the journey prevails and they have to separate – even though the alders and the willows are weeping. And so the journey continues, through fields and forests, over hills and dales. The musical language varies, the spoken language varies a bit and we end up in an alpine landscape with a dialect that isn’t too easy to penetrate. But the journey has been fascinating in its manifoldness of impressions and musical adventures have been plenty. Sometimes the singing hasn’t been very sophisticated – Schubert’s Der Musensohn is rather unpolished for instance, but full of life. Wandrers Nachtlied on the other hand is tender-hearted and restrained and sensitively lyrical. Fürstenthal’s Reiselied is merry but with a tear in the voice, Strauss’s Nachtgang is beautifully sung with excellent legato. Peter Warlock’s Jillian of Berry is syncopated and rhythmically alert while his lullaby Rest, sweet nymphs is almost whispered. One hesitates a while before Albin Fries’s Über allen Gipfeln and thinks ‘Why bother setting the poem again when Schubert’s version is the ultimate?’ But at second thought: ‘Why not?’ – and plays it again … and again … and suddenly it has stuck. Repeated listening to new acquaintances often opens door to new worlds, and Fries’s world seems enticing. What else has he done? Worth investigating!

The concluding alpine song is a folk song, but Hugo A. Brandner has had a finger in the pie and the two artist on this disc have adopted it and dressed in suitable garb for the Lied-repertoire, and the concoction has become tasty – but the dialect is still an impenetrable brushwood. Never mind, it is charming and an unpretentious finale to this highly invigorating trip through foreign home districts.

Worth buying for the concept, the juxtaposition of mostly little-heard songs and the enthusiastic performances.

Göran Forsling
 
Contents
Johannes BRAHMS (1833 – 1897)
1. Keinen hat es noch gereut [3:06]
Alma MAHLER (1879 – 1964)
2. Die stille Stadt [2:52]
Hugo WOLF (1860 – 1903)
3. Auf einer Wanderung [3:41]
Richard STRAUSS (1864 – 1949)
4. Nachtgang [2:48]
5. Ach Lieb, ich muss nun scheiden [1:50]
Robert FÜRSTENTHAL (1920 – 2016)
6. Reiselied [1:36]
Franz SCHUBERT (1797 – 1828)
7. Der Musensohn [2:01]
Peter WARLOCK (1894 – 1930)
8. Jillian of Berry [0:37]
Franz SCHUBERT
9. Wandrers Nachtlied II [1:56]
Peter WARLOCK
10. Rest, sweet nymphs [2:43]
Charles IVES (1874 – 1954)
11. My native land [1:44]
Johannes BRAHMS
12. Es ritt ein Ritter [2:28]
Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809 – 1847)
13. Reiselied [2:43]
Richard STRAUSS
14. Zueignung [1:43]
Johannes BRAHMS
15. Wie rafft ich mich auf [3:40]
Franz SCHUBERT
16. Die Stadt [2:40]
Robert SCHUMANN (1810 – 1856)
17. In der Fremde [1:54]
18. Mein Wagen rollet langsam [3:37]
Franz SCHUBERT
19. Willkommen und Abschied [3:18]
Albin FRIES (b. 1955)
20. Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh [3:13]
Trad. (Volkslied. Text und Weise: Hugo A. Brandner), Liederbearbeitung Rafael Fingerlos und Sascha El Mouissi)
21. Deine Händ mecht i gspian [3:11]




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