Schubert: The Singers and All the Songs

Schubert wrote 600-plus songs for solo voice and piano, and Hyperion--a small, classy British company that has to date specialized in Baroque repertory--is planning to record every one of them.

It is up to volume seven--about a fifth of the project--so a progress report is in order.

The driving force of the series is British pianist-scholar Graham Johnson, who is the accompanist throughout, a function he fulfills with fluency, intelligence and, when required, drama. The singers are mostly Britishers, of varying degrees of renown, with a couple of ringers, Janet Baker and Elly Ameling.

The seven individual CDs are valuable, at the very least as reference sources. Whether the deep-dyed lieder buff will respond with enthusiasm is another matter.

The first and seventh volumes are required listening. No. 1 (Hyperion 33001) offers 19 songs to texts of Goethe and Schiller, some familiar, such as “Nahe des Geliebten,” “Wonne der Wehmut” and “Erster Verlust,” most less so and hardly the less compelling for that, particularly in performances of such verbal point and canny vocalism as that of Janet Baker, an ageless marvel.

Ameling’s program (33007) treats largely intimate, unfamiliar settings of little-known poets--songs that do not tax the soprano’s current vocal resources yet allow her to share with us the accumulated wisdom of more than three decades of performing masterfully both the core components and byways of the art-song repertory.

Best of the less familiar singers is Stephen Varcoe, whose youthful, light baritone and keen intelligence are applied to songs dealing with things aquatic: rivers, ships, fishermen. Outstanding are the gentle “Am Bach im Fruhling” (an old Hans Hotter specialty) and the somber “Auf der Donau” (33002).

The programs assigned to tenor Philip Langridge (33004) and his wife, mezzo Ann Murray (33003), are problematic.

Langridge, a fine vocal actor, particularly in 20th-Century repertory, has a voice that shatters under pressure, most notably in such dramatic fare as “Nachtstuck,” which is also taken far too slowly for his--or our--comfort, and the passionate “Liebesrauch” which requires a firmer instrument than his.

Murray, for her part, is a placid, monochromatic interpreter of such wonders as the grotesque “Der Zwerg” and the magically evocative--in other hands--”Nacht und Traume.”

Anthony Rolfe Johnson, one of today’s indispensable Bach, Handel and Britten tenors, has the physical equipment for his music (on 33006) but is short of the requisite temperament, particularly for the likes of “Wilkommen und Abschied.” Rolfe Johnson’s sweet-toned, fussy crooning simply emasculates the music.

Elizabeth Connell’s big, windblown soprano is all wrong for Schubert’s intimacies, of which there are several examples in her program (33005). Yet it is she who delivers some of the series’ memorable moments when matched with the composer’s most dramatic songs, the sort of stuff that does not sound out of place in the mouth of a Wagnerian: “Die Allmacht” and “Dem Unendlichen.”

More about Hyperion’s Schubert in a future column.

There are three new recorded interpretations, all from German singers, of Schubert’s great, glum “Winterreise” cycle: baritone Olaf Bar, bass Michael Schopper (BMG/Deutsche Harmonia Mubndi 77055) and mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender (EMI/Angel 49846).

Bar may be the most accomplished of today’s younger German lieder singers and he is in peak form here, delivering with his finely-tuned, middleweight instrument a dramatic interpretation, in conjunction with Geoffrey Parsons’ strongly supportive pianism.

Schopper, with his darkish, well-controlled instrument, presents a fast-paced, low-key but not inexpressive interpretation. Andreas Staier, his accompanist--on the fortepiano--is, however, a bit of a stick.

The veteran Fassbaender knows her stuff, has a strong, secure voice and enjoys the powerful collaboration of pianist Aribert Reimann. But poet Wilhelm Muller and Schubert in their “Winterreise” expressed, in the first person, the thoughts of a man, which Fassbaender most emphatically is not.