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Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin
Samuel Hasselhorn
Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder - Released September 22, 2023 | harmonia mundi
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This 2023 release inaugurates an ongoing series from baritone Samuel Hasselhorn and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, performing Schubert works two centuries on from their date of composition, and slated to culminate in 2028, the bicentennial of the composer's death. The project begins with one of the most famous Schubert song cycles of all, Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795, depicting the crackup and despair of a young wanderer who falls in love with a beautiful miller's daughter. Hasselhorn has plenty of recent competition in this cycle; listeners can sample the 2017 recording by Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber for another approach, but this one promises well for the ongoing project. Die schöne Müllerin is a work in which Schubert took vast strides toward the emancipation of the piano in the lied, and Bushakevitz leans into this aspect, with details that illuminate and often foreshadow themes developing in the text. Hasselhorn has a warm baritone with an appealing conversational tone that turns chilly and quiet toward the cycle's downer conclusion. Another draw is Harmonia Mundi's sound from the b-sharp studio in Berlin; the engineers put Bushakevitz just a bit forward in the mix, not so much as to sap energy from Hasselhorn's singing, but enough to highlight his perceptive performance. This release bodes well indeed for the duo's future work.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin, Schwanengesang & Winterreise
Christoph Prégardien
Classical - Released May 7, 2021 | Challenge Classics
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Schubert: Die Schöne Mullerin
Thomas Guthrie
Mélodies - Released November 24, 2023 | RUBICON
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Baritone Thomas Guthrie gets top billing, as is usual for the singer, on this recording of Schubert's song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, but equally important is the ensemble Barokksolistene, contributing a string quintet and a pair of guitars as accompaniment to Schubert's familiar songs about the fair maid of the mill. The arrangements are by Guthrie, but this release was the product of a musical-theatrical presentation by Barokksolistene, a group that has tried, so to speak, to bring classical music back to the barrooms, with performances of Baroque music in pub-like settings. It is hard to evaluate the recording without the theatrical context; the backing group is different from the usual ones offered by Barokksolistene, and there is something of the flavor of two projects going at cross purposes. On the other hand, arrangements of all kinds were common in the 19th century, and even if a string quintet would be unlikely for an informal musicale, nothing here goes beyond the bounds of what is reasonable. Guthrie has an appealing baritone, and as an introduction to the undoubtedly experimental spirit of Barokksolistene, this album succeeds. It made classical best-seller charts in the holiday season of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Schubert : Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795
Christian Gerhaher
Lieder (German) - Released October 6, 2017 | Sony Classical
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German baritone Christian Gerhaher and his accompanist/partner-in-creativity Gerold Huber have risen to the top of the heap in primary lied repertory, and it is easy to see why. In their second turn through Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, Gerhaher could simply have applied his golden baritone, and everybody would have been happy. Instead, he steps into character and conveys the unsettled psyche of the cycle's frustrated protagonist. He may gain strength at times, whereupon the famed Gerhaher sound comes through, but the cycle has a convincing dramatic arc that ends in unhappiness and weakness. Sample Trockne Blumen toward the end for the full range. Another Gerhaher innovation here is the inclusion of unset poems, recited by Gerhaher at the beginning, at the end, and along the way. This both breaks the tension and provides a more complex context to the whole sequence, and it's certainly something that one can imagine Schubert and his friends doing in their chambers. The booklet of the CD version has more on Schubert, Müller, and their orbit. A masterful, extremely satisfying remaking of some famous songs, and a Die schöne Müllerin that elevates the cycle to the level of Die Winterreise, D. 911.© TiVo
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Accentus: The a capella Recordings
Accentus
Classical - Released December 9, 2016 | naïve classique
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Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin; Lieder
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Classical - Released January 1, 2000 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Thomas Quasthoff in Verbier
Thomas Quasthoff
Classical - Released December 1, 2023 | Verbier Festival Gold
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Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 25, D. 795 (Live)
Ian Bostridge
Classical - Released November 6, 2020 | PentaTone
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Ian Bostridge continues his new exploration of Schubert song cycles with a recording of Die schöne Müllerin, together with pianist Saskia Giorgini. Die schöne Müllerin (1823) was Schubert’s first song cycle, and simultaneously Bostridge’s first extended introduction to the Lied and all its wonders. Schubert initially conceived the cycle together with poet Wilhelm Müller as a party game among friends, but gradually got captivated by the profundity of this apparently naïve love story. Bostridge is equally fascinated by the way in which this playful, folk-inspired piece gradually transforms into a cosmic lullaby in the final lines of the last song ‘des Baches Wiegenlied’. For pianist Giorgini, the key to - but also the greatest challenge of - interpreting Schubert’s music, and particularly Die schöne Müllerin, lies in the oceanic experience and hypnotic power of repetition. © Pentatone
Schubert: Lieder
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Classical - Released July 22, 2023 | UME - Global Clearing House
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The first set was as good as it gets, the second set was even better, and the third set is best of all. Of course, this is impossible. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's three sets of the nearly complete songs of Schubert don't really get any better from volume to volume. His voice -- his marvelous voice, the voice of German Lieder in our time -- was sublime in the earliest songs of the first volume and just as sublime in the later songs of the second volume. His interpretations -- the most sensitive, soulful, intelligent, and sublime -- were sublime in the early songs and the late songs. And pianist Gerald Moore was still the accompanist without peer in every song. But the third set is still the best of all because this is the set with the three great cycles -- Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, and Schwanengesang -- and no matter how great the individual songs are, the cycles go further into the heart and soul of man. And Fischer-Dieskau goes further, too: his Die schöne Müllerin is love, youth, spring, and death; his Winterreise is love, despair, and madness without end; and his Schwanengesang is almost unbearable in its endless intensity and infinite concentration. One of the greatest sets of recordings ever made, this is fit to stand with Beecham's La bohème, Davis' Kind of Blue, and Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. Everyone should hear these discs.© TiVo
The first set was as good as it gets, the second set was even better, and the third set is best of all. Of course, this is impossible. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's three sets of the nearly complete songs of Schubert don't really get any better from volume to volume. His voice -- his marvelous voice, the voice of German Lieder in our time -- was sublime in the earliest songs of the first volume and just as sublime in the later songs of the second volume. His interpretations -- the most sensitive, soulful, intelligent, and sublime -- were sublime in the early songs and the late songs. And pianist Gerald Moore was still the accompanist without peer in every song. But the third set is still the best of all because this is the set with the three great cycles -- Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, and Schwanengesang -- and no matter how great the individual songs are, the cycles go further into the heart and soul of man. And Fischer-Dieskau goes further, too: his Die schöne Müllerin is love, youth, spring, and death; his Winterreise is love, despair, and madness without end; and his Schwanengesang is almost unbearable in its endless intensity and infinite concentration. One of the greatest sets of recordings ever made, this is fit to stand with Beecham's La bohème, Davis' Kind of Blue, and Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. Everyone should hear these discs.© TiVo
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Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795
Brigitte Fassbaender
Classical - Released January 1, 1995 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Pachelbel: Canon - Beethoven: Moonlight Sonata - Schubert: Ave Maria - Listz: Love Dream & La Campanella - Satie: Gymnopèdies - Sinding: Rustle of Spring - Chopin: Waltzes & Impromptu - Mendelssohn: Wedding March
Walter Rinaldi
Classical - Released October 28, 2012 | Rinaldi & Rinaldi Produzioni
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Aux étoiles - French Symphonic Poems
Orchestre National De Lyon
Classical - Released October 20, 2023 | Bru Zane
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This double-album release from the specialist Palazzetto Bru Zane label, better known for opera but doing fine here with orchestral music, landed on classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023, and this is really no wonder. The album puts together many attractive features, beginning with fine work from the beefy (34 violins) Orchestre National de Lyon under conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider. The album comprises a little history of the French tone poem from the third quarter of the 19th century to the second decade of the 20th, and it includes many works that will be unfamiliar to all but specialists, along with a few hits (Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre, Op. 40, Paul Dukas' L'apprenti sorcier ["The Sorcerer's Apprentice"] in a brisk, colorful performance, Emmanuel Chabrier's España, and perhaps Franck's Le chasseur maudit). As for the rest, there are no fewer than four works by women composers: Lili Boulanger, Augusta Holmès, Mel Bonis, and Charlotte Sohy; the Danse mystique of the latter is perhaps both the most obscure and the most compelling. Several works by better-known male composers also seem well worth removal from the historical scrap heap; sample Ernest Chausson's hushed Viviane, Op. 5, or Vincent d'Indy's Istar, Op. 42, the tone poem Wagner never wrote. Or the title work by Henri Duparc, much more familiar as a song composer. More generally, one is impressed by the cohesion of the program as a whole, even as French styles underwent fundamental change. Most of the composers try to show a mastery of the large orchestra and of the big tune as second subject. This is a highly listenable group of pieces that hearers will be glad to know better.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Ravel: L'Heure espagnole - Bolero
François-Xavier Roth
Opera - Released June 16, 2023 | harmonia mundi
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The main attraction of the orchestra Les Siècles and its conductor François-Xavier Roth is its use of period instruments from around 1900, the time period in which the group specializes. One could hardly ask for a better demonstration record (as audiophiles used to call them) than this take on Maurice Ravel's L'Heure espagnole, an edgy, rather tawdry but undeniably funny little opera about the extramarital escapades of a clockmaker's wife, complete with excellent satirical characterizations of her two lovers. The opera receives a pitch-perfect performance here from a quintet of younger singers, who deliver the kind of dry, close-to-spoken singing Ravel wanted. Even better, though, is the orchestral sound, where the opera's large contingent of winds, brass, and percussion displays the sound of Les Siècles at its most vivid. The score calls for trios of oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, and these all have a tangier sound than modern instruments provide. The program ends with Boléro, and this, too, stands out from among the hundreds or thousands of other recordings on the market. Ravel had very fixed ideas about how he wanted the work to sound, and he wrangled with Arturo Toscanini, who conducted the premiere in New York, about it: it should be played absolutely straight, with no variation in tempo and little expression. Notwithstanding the connotations that became attached to the work later on, he viewed it as an abstract work, and that is exactly what it becomes in Roth's bracing reading. Listeners who have been wanting to sample Roth's work with this orchestra are enthusiastically encouraged to try this release, which made classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Maria Mater Meretrix
Anna Prohaska
Classical - Released April 14, 2023 | Alpha Classics
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By no means should you be expecting the "typical" productions we so often associate with the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Together with the soprano Anna Prohaska, she has developed a highly original programme which brings violin and vocals together. In this respect, while we were delighted to find a recording of the beautiful and all too rare Maria-Triptychon, which Frank Martin wrote in 1968 for Irmgard Seefried and her violinist husband Wolfgang Schneiderhan, we wonder whether it was really necessary to dismantle this polyptych whose three movements tell the story of the mother of Christ with perfect fluidity.It must be said that the entirety of this unusual album feels rather all over the place, very much like György Kurtág who unsurprisingly features in this curious inventory of a thousand years of music, from Hildegard von Bingen to the present day.We need to look elsewhere for the main theme and, more precisely, at the questioning of the two musicians around the subject of female emancipation and “the sensitive exploration of their common experiences as women evolving in the current music industry.” This quest for content, set to music around the figure of Mary, evokes a mixture of shimmering colours created by the Camerata de Berne orchestra, and depicts a journey through the ages and arias which incorporates so many of the contradictions of human nature. We highly recommend that you immerse yourself fully, and listen to these twenty tracks from beginning to end. This way you will be better able to appreciate this strangely fascinating patchwork, which feels like a work of art in its own right. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Central Tour 2022
Indochine
Rock - Released January 13, 2023 | RCA Group
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Après un rêve (Belle Époque: Nights at the Piano)
Emmanuel Despax
Classical - Released June 16, 2023 | Signum Records
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It is hard to figure out what pianist Emmanuel Despax had in mind for the concept of this album. Its various titles offer three ideas: Après un rêve comes from the title of a Fauré song Despax transcribes for his program opener, plus there is "Belle Époque: Nights at the Piano." None of these is of much use; few pieces other than the Fauré are particularly dreamy, and the largest piece, Poulenc's Soirées de Nazelles, is from the nervous 1930s and nowhere near the Belle Époque in time or mood. As for "Nights at the Piano," that fits the Poulenc nicely but not the concluding Gaspard de la Nuit of Ravel, which is an imposing virtuoso concert work carrying none of the connotations of "Nights at the Piano." Really, Despax excels in none of these three ways but rather in a fourth: he hits on an intriguing mix of familiar standards and unusual works. Among the latter group are the Soirées de Nazelles, which Poulenc disclaimed and, perhaps for that reason, have been seldom heard. They are delightful pieces that bear titles describing qualities, like the numbers of a Baroque French suite, but actually seem to have been devised by Poulenc to describe members of a group of his friends, like Elgar's Enigma Variations. The result is a work that distills the hint of improvisation that pervades some of Poulenc's keyboard music and songs, and Despax gives it the right lively, spontaneous feel. The Nocturne, Op. 165, of Cécile Chaminade and the keyboard version of Henri Duparc's Aux étoiles are also nice finds. As for the more heavily trodden works, Debussy's Clair de lune is pleasantly moody, although no one would select this album for the rote Gaspard de la Nuit or the rather un-macabre Danse Macabre, Op. 40, of Saint-Saëns. For Poulenc lovers, however, this is an important find.
© James Manheim /TiVo
Les Autres c’est nous
Bigflo & Oli
Hip-Hop/Rap - Released June 23, 2022 | Universal Music Division One Records
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French Duets - Fauré: Dolly Suite; Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc etc.
Steven Osborne
Classical - Released March 5, 2021 | Hyperion
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Silvestrov: Silent Songs
Hélène Grimaud
Classical - Released March 3, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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The star of Valentin Silvestrov was on the rise even before the 85-year-old composer fled his native Ukraine after the Russian invasion and settled in Berlin, and this release by baritone Konstantin Krimmel and pianist Hélène Grimaud shot onto classical best-seller charts in early 2023. The impetus for the project came from Grimaud, who has championed Silvestrov's work. Indeed, she might have wanted to record these songs, for one of their attractive features is the way the piano and the voice interact on equal terms in simple textures, with the piano often doubling the vocal line. The Silent Songs were some of the first pieces Silvestrov wrote after abandoning modernist idioms in the 1970s, but they do not represent some kind of retreat into Soviet orthodoxy. They are simple but not minimalist, and they are uncanny. "We may feel we have always known these songs," Paul Griffiths wrote in the notes for an earlier recording of the Silent Songs, "and in a sense we have. The first hearing will not seem the first." The melodic material has the feel of late Beethoven in its almost naïve simplicity that seems to contain depths. Krimmel does very well in not oversinging these pieces, and his rapport with Grimaud is obvious. The texts are in Ukrainian and Russian, but "The Isle" is a translation of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and this makes a good place to start sampling (or else the translation of Keats' "La belle dame sans merci"). Yet, one can hear these songs without focusing too closely on the texts; they have a mysterious alchemy of voice and piano. This is a beautiful recording that will reveal much on multiple hearings.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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