Landmark Schöne Müllerin performances on record

[LKB]

Konstantin Krimmel's got a gorgeous voice, baritone, like a cup of velvety Italian style hot chocolate. He  is sensitive to the text in an unforced, natural sounding way. He can do introspective beautifully. It's very much Krimmel's show but Heide is absolutely fine. Good sound.  A downside it's that he occasionally embellishes the music in a way which becomes predictable, I think they're called turns.

Going to the well too often - whether for ornaments or for interpretive cliches of any type - will inevitably turn against you. 

[Mandryka]

Jonas Kaufmann is so radiant, so colourful, and the interpretation is so upbeat, that I think this CD is a real shot in the arm (you can tell I've just had my COVID vaccine.)

 More studied, more knowing, more complicated and nuanced, than Peter Blochwitz -- someone compares Kaufmann unfavourably with him on Amazon.de but I'm glad to have heard both.

[Florestan]

Jonas Kaufmann is so radiant, so colourful, and the interpretation is so upbeat, that I think this CD is a real shot in the arm (you can tell I've just had my COVID vaccine.)

Make sure to check their Winterreise as well. And while you're at it, their Liszt Lieder disc. Imho, they are a match made in heaven, such as Di Fi-Di & Gerald Moore or Gerard Souzay & Dalton Baldwin.

[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

Very satisfying to return to Mauro Peter, in this case "museum quality" is not a pejorative. The voice is immaculate - maybe the piano could do with a bit more character, but maybe not.

I saw Pregardian perform it with Schiff on Friday. I didn't enjoy Pregardian, I thought his embellishments were unnatural and overstated, he would do well to learn from Mauro Peter. Schiff was very good though . . . and it's interesting how the presence of a fortepiano - with its colourful registers and "speaking" character - changes the feel of the whole cycle.

[Mandryka]

Really special, flexible, piano playing from Ulrich Eisenlohr. Christian Elsner sings rather than declaims - nice voice IMO and he clearly inhabits the music and knows the sense of the poems. Recommended enthusiastically by yours truly.

[Florestan]

Really special, flexible, piano playing from Ulrich Eisenlohr. Christian Elsner sings rather than declaims - nice voice IMO and he clearly inhabits the music and knows the sense of the poems. Recommended enthusiastically by yours truly.

Duly noted, thanks.

Whose/what portrait is that?

[Mandryka]

Duly noted, thanks.

Whose/what portrait is that?

Wilhelm Müller

[Florestan]

Wilhelm Müller

Thanks. He looks like a typical case of "separate the work from the author"... I mean, a jolly good fellow he seems to have been. 

[André]

High lyric tenor anyone ? I was listening to some French songs by Cyrille Dubois today and wondered if his wasn't the ideal type of voice to convey the infatuation and heartache of the innocent, heartbroken lad of Schubert's song cycle.

Similarly, I find the guitar accompaniment sometimes used gives a welcome lift to the storytelling. Lighter-toned, bouncing more easily in the cheery songs but still resonating mournfully when necessary in the second half of the song cycle.

[Mandryka]

High lyric tenor anyone ? I was listening to some French songs by Cyrille Dubois today and wondered if his wasn't the ideal type of voice to convey the infatuation and heartache of the innocent, heartbroken lad of Schubert's song cycle.

Similarly, I find the guitar accompaniment sometimes used gives a welcome lift to the storytelling. Lighter-toned, bouncing more easily in the cheery songs but still resonating mournfully when necessary in the second half of the song cycle.

Sounds to me like you'd enjoy the CD with Olle Persson & Mats Bergström.

[Mandryka]

Thanks. He looks like a typical case of "separate the work from the author"... I mean, a jolly good fellow he seems to have been. 

I agree, it's a fetching portrait.

[Jo498]

Wilhelm Müller's son Max was one of the first great European scholars of India and its culture and languages. He was later professor in Britain but is apparently still so well known in India that the institutes for spreading German language and culture that are everywhere else named "Goethe-Institut" are named after Müller in India.

I am uncertain but I think I've read that some people take the "Müllerin"-Story as a bit ironic or happening just in the guy's imagination because it seems so exaggerated. In any case, like Winterreise it's clearly assuming a rôle, not biographical from Müller.

[André]

Sounds to me like you'd enjoy the CD with Olle Persson & Mats Bergström.

Thanks for the re. I love Die Schöne Müllerin with guitar accompaniment. I have two versions with a tenor singer. I'll sample Persson's version.

[Mandryka]

I am uncertain but I think I've read that some people take the "Müllerin"-Story as a bit ironic or happening just in the guy's imagination because it seems so exaggerated. In any case, like Winterreise it's clearly assuming a rôle, not biographical from Müller.

The opposite of that is, I guess, Wunderlich's interpretation. Also this lovely one from Jean Paul Fourchecourt -- like a set of folk songs.

[Mandryka]

Going to the well too often - whether for ornaments or for interpretive cliches of any type - will inevitably turn against you. 

I had the same problem with Pregardien in concert last year. Schiff played piano for him, really well -- the only time I've stayed in a lieder recital just for the pianist!