FLOURISHING ART SONGS

The art song continues to prosper on recordings, notably on smaller European labels that, it should be noted, are meeting with excellent receptions from American record buyers.

Small labels, yes. Small artists, hardly. The most prominent active male singers of German art songs, baritones Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Hermann Prey, are surfacing with increasing frequency on these labels in repertory that doesn’t strike the commercial fancy of the big companies. Both veterans can be heard currently on the German Orfeo label, distributed in the United States by Harmonia Mundi.

Fischer-Dieskau brings us charming esoterica, a score of songs by Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832), a friend of Goethe’s and the great poet’s favorite song-composer. (Goethe seems never to have seen or heard a scrap of Schubert’s music.)

Among the Zelter Goethe settings here (Orfeo 097 841A, standard or compact disc) are texts familiar via Schubert, including the “Harfenspieler” Songs, “Wand’rers Nachtlied,” “Rastlose Liebe” and “Wonne der Wehmut.”

Zelter--like Goethe himself--believed that the art song should reflect the simplicity of folk song, making it suitable for performance by accomplished amateurs of the time.

The material is well suited to Fischer-Dieskau’s current vocal estate, and he treats it with respect and his customary fastidiousness. The accompanist, on an 1836 fortepiano, is German composer (“Lear”) Aribert Reimann.

Brahms’ “Die schoene Magelone” is based on poems from a mock-medieval novel by Ludwig Tieck: sentimental love lyrics that elicited from the composer some of his most expressive and light-handed song settings.

While there have been no less than three recorded versions of this song-cycle by Fischer-Dieskau (and, perhaps, no more than that by all other singers combined), Prey has only now been given the opportunity to add his name to that short list, the occasion being a recent Vienna recital recorded live by Orfeo (116 842, two standard or compact discs).

This is demanding music, calling for a powerful, wide-ranging voice, the ability to spin the long legato line, and superior storytelling gifts. Prey triumphs on all counts, with the not inconsiderable assistance of pianist Helmut Deutsch.

The only cavil one might have with this production is that it occupies two expensive imported discs, a situation necessitated by the inclusion of a running precis of Tieck’s novel, devised and blandly recited by the baritone’s daughter, Annette Prey.

Dare one hope for a single disc devoted only to the music?

Deutsche Grammophon has issued in its mid-priced Resonance series a two-record set (410 546) of the complete solo songs of Mozart performed by Prey, soprano Edith Mathis and pianist Bernhard Klee--a first American release of material recorded in the mid-1970s.

Mozart’s 30-odd songs are the true forerunners of the Schubert lied: tightly welded unities in which the piano is as much the carrier of the text’s meaning and emotion as the voice. Although most of Mozart’s texts are unassuming little things by forgotten poets, he makes a little dramatic world out of each.

Prey is, again, in magnificent vocal and dramatic fettle while Mathis’ voice had not as yet taken on the acidulousness one hears nowadays.

Schubert’s cycle “Die schoene Muellerin” hardly lacks for distinguished, even legendary recordings. Deutsche Grammophon’s newly issued interpretation by the popular young Mexican tenor Francisco Araiza (415 347, standard or compact disc) falls into neither category.

While his German enunciation is flawless and he possesses the proper light timbre for the music, Araiza’s stonily unvariegated delivery offers hardly a hint of the fact that the words tell a story. Irwin Gage is the unavailingly hard-working pianist.

We return to the world of domestic music with a delightful program called “The Gallant Troubadour” (EMI/Angel DS-37352) in which Robert White sings in his sweet, high tenor settings by Beethoven and Weber of 18th-Century English, Welsh and Scottish lyrics, including several by Robert Burns.

These songs were potboilers for their composers but surpassingly graceful ones, particularly Beethoven’s, which show far greater sensitivity to the capabilities of the human voice than do his more self-consciously artistic productions.

White’s polished vocalism is masterfully accompanied by an ensemble comprising pianist Samuel Sanders, violinist Mark Peskanov, cellist Nathaniel Rosen and flutist Ransom Wilson.

Briefly noted: A program of irresistible, sometimes hilarious (unintentionally, one must assume) salon songs of Sir Arthur Sullivan--without Gilbert--stylishly presented by soprano Jeanne Ommerle, baritone Sanford Sylvan and pianist Gary Wedow (Northeastern Records NR 217). . . . “The Sea,” a score of nautically themed songs by Haydn, Schubert, Faure, Ives, Borodin, Walton--comic, tragic, simple, sophisticated by turns, not a dud among them--is presented by a trio of gifted Britishers: baritone Thomas Allen, mezzo Sarah Walker, pianist Roger Vignoles (Hyperion 66165). . . . An attractive, inexpensive reissue (Deutsche Grammophon 415 448) has the husband-wife team of soprano Evelyn Lear and baritone Thomas Stewart singing duets by Schubert, Schumann, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and Stephen Foster.