Landmark Schöne Müllerin performances on record

[Mandryka]

I'm getting into it - so far focussing on Aksel Schiøtz and Jorma Hynninen. Who has brought something special to this cycle?


I must say, Hynninen's Schubert is very good, here and his two Winterreise recordings. Recommended enthusiastically.

[Mandryka]

I'm going to suggest that Bostridge/Uchida is a major masterpiece - whatever you think about his accent. It combines a meticulous attention to detail in the best Bildungsbuergertum tradition with feeling, expressiveness, angst. Bostridge is able to move from the faux-naive folk music style at the start of the cycle to the quasi-cosmic style later on. His voice still has some of the freshness of his early recording with Johnson. Uchida has excellent judgement about when to keep in the background and when to bring the piano part into the foreground.

[Mandryka]

From Markus Schäfer and Tobias Koch's landmark recording - though possibly a landmark which no-one else dares visit.

Baron Carl von Schönstein, to whom Schubert dedicated the first edition of Die schöne Müllerin, published in five volumes in 1824. An original copy of the first edition contains handwritten comments and modifications in Schönstein's own hand Just like the 2nd edition of the cycle published in 1830 by Diabelli in Vienna, and like the handwritten copies of several of the songs passed around in Schubert circles, Schönstein's variants, alternatives and modifications reveal that – despite all respect towards the composer's intentions – it was common practice to approach the score with a certain amount of creative
freedom. Vestiges of the 19th-century art of improvisation are preserved in these well-documented, justifiably proven alterations. Improvisation was a matter of course in music practice
back then, and it lay at the very heart of the musical parlor game invented in Staegemann's
home.


Musicians of Schubert's time reacted to signals they recognized in the score. Repeat signs,
for instance, were always understood to indicate that one should vary the music the second
time around. That also applies to the great number of songs with regularly recurring stanzas
that we find in Die schöne Müllerin, inviting the singer and pianist to embody each stanza in
an appropriate, different way.


Markus Schäfer and Tobias Koch have intensely studied the performance practice of Schubert's
time. However, their take on Berger's and Schubert's Lieder is not intended to be an act of purely
reconstructive historicism, but rather a consciously subjective appropriation and transformation
of a historical practice – far beyond merely ornamenting the original notes. The two musicians
strive to achieve a kind of improvisational trance to emphasize and direct our attention to
details in the text and the music. This not only takes place in the vocal part, but also in the piano
part. In their approach, the piano is allowed to react to the voice or inspire it: by modifying
texture and range, by introducing new accompaniment figures or by imitating the sound of
horns when they are suggested in the text – even by inserting additional bars or by quoting
previously written songs. Such reminiscences do not appear literally in the score, but it contains
them in nuce, nevertheless

We could not yet imagine that we were embarking on a new kind of adventure when we
started working together on the two Müllerin settings. Our wide-ranging study of the sources
led us to new insights, which started acquiring a life of their own and helped us acquire an
increasingly unfettered vision of Schubert's heartbreaking song cycle. We were fascinated to
observe the extent to which familiar elements now stood on their head. What had hitherto
seemed a matter of course now revealed itself as just one of many possible interpretations.
Even the "miracle" of apparent unity between music and text only occurs in the uniquely
intuitive moment of a rendition, whether on stage or in the salon. For that to emerge, on every
occasion, a creative process needs to take place on both sides – even when we are listening to
a recording. If performers and listeners make up their minds in advance and if their expectations
are cut-and-dried, they are partially obliterating something that should always remain alive
and which should have its immediate effect in the moment.


To what extent is "historically informed" performance practice supposed to be truly historically
informed? To what extent will audiences regard our experimental approach as postmodern?
Will they understand the crucial question we are raising on the subject of faithfulness to the
original? These works were handed down to us and we have been entrusted with their care.
In all honesty and with all due respect, how could we otherwise approach them than with
wholehearted sincerity, no holds barred?

https://static.qobuz.com/goodies/68/000162386.pdf

[Mandryka]

A couple more landmarks.

Mauro Peter was the pick of the pack in the last BBC Radio 3 Building a Library on this cycle. It strikes me as immaculate and restrained, humble. I think the technical term is "museum quality" The programme, from 2018, is still streaming - I haven't listened yet but will do.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p069qtv7

And this is the first ever recording, Franz Navál. Good voice, good sound for 1909. His voice is elegant, there are lots of embellishments, quirky by the standards of contemporary fashion  - but it's attractive, a real interesting document for me.

[Florestan]

The rapid alternation between depressive, manic and tender moods makes this almost bipolar tripolar. 

Even Vickers' slight English accent, far from being annoying, contributes to the feeling of alienation and displacement.

In a league of its own, this Winterreise.

[Mandryka]

The rapid alternation between depressive, manic and tender moods makes this almost bipolar tripolar. 

Even Vickers' slight English accent, far from being annoying, contributes to the feeling of alienation and displacement.

In a league of its own, this Winterreise.

Wrong cycle. What I'll do is I'll create a new thread for Winterreise landmarks -- as I'm kind of getting into it a bit.

[Florestan]

Wrong cycle.

Drat! I'm getting older by the day...

[AnotherSpin]

Drat! I'm getting older by the day...

No need to bang you head against the wall...

[Mandryka]

Drat! I'm getting older by the day...

That reminded me of Chard Whitlow's parody of T S Eliot's Burnt Norton


As we get older we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and today I am fifty-five,
And this time last year I was fifty-four,
And this time next year I shall be sixty-two.
And I cannot say I should like (to speak for myself)
To see my time over again— if you can call it time:
Fidgeting uneasily under a draughty stair,
Or counting sleepless nights in the crowded Tube.

There are certain precautions— though none of them very reliable—
Against the blast from bombs and the flying splinter,
But not against the blast from heaven, vento dei venti,
The wind within a wind unable to speak for wind;
And the frigid burnings of purgatory will not be touched
By any emollient.
                                    I think you will find this put,
Better than I could ever hope to express it,
In the words of Kharma: "It is, we believe,
Idle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump
Will extinguish hell."
                                            Oh, listeners,
And you especially who have turned off the wireless,
And sit in Stoke or Basingstoke listening appreciatively to the silence,
(Which is also the silence of hell) pray not for your selves but your souls.
And pray for me also under the draughty stair.
As we get older we do not get any younger.

And pray for Kharma under the holy mountain.

[Florestan]

That reminded me of Chard Whitlow's parody of T S Eliot's Burnt Norton


As we get older we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and today I am fifty-five,
And this time last year I was fifty-four,
And this time next year I shall be sixty-two.

Brilliant, thanks for that. I'm fifty-one. 

[AnotherSpin]

That reminded me of Chard Whitlow's parody of T S Eliot's Burnt Norton


As we get older we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and today I am fifty-five,
And this time last year I was fifty-four,
And this time next year I shall be sixty-two.
And I cannot say I should like (to speak for myself)
To see my time over again— if you can call it time:
Fidgeting uneasily under a draughty stair,
Or counting sleepless nights in the crowded Tube.

There are certain precautions— though none of them very reliable—
Against the blast from bombs and the flying splinter,
But not against the blast from heaven, vento dei venti,
The wind within a wind unable to speak for wind;
And the frigid burnings of purgatory will not be touched
By any emollient.
                                    I think you will find this put,
Better than I could ever hope to express it,
In the words of Kharma: "It is, we believe,
Idle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump
Will extinguish hell."
                                            Oh, listeners,
And you especially who have turned off the wireless,
And sit in Stoke or Basingstoke listening appreciatively to the silence,
(Which is also the silence of hell) pray not for your selves but your souls.
And pray for me also under the draughty stair.
As we get older we do not get any younger.

And pray for Kharma under the holy mountain.

Thank you.

[Mandryka]

Brilliant, thanks for that. I'm fifty-one. 

Just a nipper.

[Mandryka]

Thank you.

I just saw the reference to bombs and put two and two together.  Bon courage.

[Florestan]

What do you make of this? I listened to it yesterday and was positively impressed, but I might be biased, Olaf Baer is one of my favorite Lieder singers.

[LKB]

Die Schöne Müllerin is near and dear to me. " Das Wandern " and " Halt! " were assigned to me for my first vocal Jury exam ( back in the Jurassic period. I think a Stegosaurus was my accompanist, or perhaps Triceratops... ) when l was an aspiring young baritone.

My vocal professor wasn't wild about my studying a recording of the work while learning the basics of operatic vocal production, but she finally relented on the condition that with Schubert l would only listen to Fischer-Dieskau.

I was happy to comply. 

[Mandryka]

What do you make of this? I listened to it yesterday and was positively impressed, but I might be biased, Olaf Baer is one of my favorite Lieder singers.

A agreeable rich voice, easy to listen to. And quite dramatic. I know him from some Wolf songs - Mörike and Spanisches.

[Florestan]

A agreeable rich voice, easy to listen to. And quite dramatic.

Agreed. There is a palpable sense of greater and greater joy and happiness from the beginning until the hunter makes his appearance, then a palpable sense of deeper and deeper descent into sadness and melancholy. Lovely.

I know him from some Wolf songs - Mörike and Spanisches.

Have those too and like them. His Schumann is excellent too.

[Mandryka]

An old discussion of landmark recordings here

http://operacritiques.free.fr/css/index.php?2014/04/15/2451-franz-




@SurprisedByBeauty  - can we have a new discography please. Chop-chop.

[Mandryka]

This is Goerne's first, 2001. I saw him around that time and was really impressed - the recording brings back the memory. Such dynamic control, such attention to the poetry, such colour, such moderation and taste! Has there ever been a more rapt neugierige?


I must explore his other recordings from the start of the century - he was special.

[AnotherSpin]

Petre Munteanu, first listening, started from Die schöne Müllerin. Like it.