Art Song Alive on Recent Recordings

The live art-song recital is an endangered species. Sure, we get the occasional operatic superstar in an intimate mood. But the song specialists are in short supply, while their audience may be verging on extinction.

The recordings, however, keep appearing, which means that someone is buying them. A small, encouraging sign.

The kind of mixed-bag song recital--several composers, styles and languages--that used to be a concert-hall commonplace is offered by tenor Vinson Cole. His program embraces Richard Strauss, Duparc, Bellini, Puccini, Refice, Nin and a group of spirituals, with pianist Patrick Stephens the assisting artist (Connoisseur Society 4184). It’s a lovely, unhackneyed assortment, delivered in a pliant, sweet-timbred voice used with the utmost refinement and sensitivity.

There’s stylistic--if not interpretive--variety in the “Salzburg Recital” of Jessye Norman and pianist James Levine, re-creating for recording a program they presented at the 1988 Salzburg Festival (Philips 422 378).

Included are works by Beethoven (his Opus 48 sacred songs), Wolf (selections from the Italian and Spanish songbooks) and Debussy, all delivered in Norman’s plummy soprano and disclosing none of the true songster’s affinity for the telling inflection and intimate gesture. The grandiose Beethoven songs best suit Norman’s majestic style.

Single-composer offerings come from one of the current luminaries of the operatic stage: soprano Cheryl Studer (Schubert) and song veterans Brigitte Fassbaender (also Schubert), Hermann Prey (Beethoven) and Peter Schreier (Schumann).

Studer, with pianist Irwin Gage, divides her program equally between songs familiar (“Im Fruhling” and “Die Forelle”) and rare (“Die Gebusche” and “Klage der Ceres”). All are accurately sung, with admirable regard for textual clarity. But the voice lacks coloristic variety here, and the cutting edge that serves Studer so well in a wide operatic gamut, ranging from Mozart’s Queen of the Night to Verdi’s Violetta to Strauss’ Salome, becomes intrusive in these small, fault-magnifying forms (Deutsche Grammophon 431 773).

Fassbaender’s program of Schubert songs on the subject of death--not all are gloomy or necessarily slow--is among the most impressive entries in the Hyperion label’s ongoing project of recording every last one of Schubert’s 600-odd songs (33011).

The German mezzo-soprano is a fiercely engaged artist, giving full value to texts, and the possessor of a big, richly hued instrument. Her pitch may be fallible, and excessive pressure occasionally creates an unwelcome beat in the voice, but she is the kind of singing actress this music requires. With Graham Johnson’s penetrating accompaniments she makes gripping mini-dramas of “Nachstuck,” “An den Tod,” “Vollendung” and the vast “Elysium,” to name a few.

In a set devoted to all 87 of Beethoven’s piano-accompanied songs, Prey at 62 cannot always summon the caressing tones--particularly at mezza voce --that have been his trademark (Capriccio 10343, three CDs). Still, there is little likelihood today of finding a singer of comparable vocal solidity and declamatory strength for this repertory.

Occasionally, as in the familiar “Adelaide” and “An die ferne Geliebte,” the interpretations are haunted by the spirit of the younger Prey, and some tempos are sluggish. Ultimately, however, his still-rich baritone and dramatic pointing of words prevail.

Soprano Pamela Coburn is called upon for the few female-voice songs, and Leonard Hokanson is the reliable pianist throughout.

Tenor Schreier, five years younger than Prey, reprises material he has been singing and recording for three decades: three Schumann cycles in their entirety, the two “Liederkreise” and “Dichterliebe,” and portions of others (Teldec 46154, three CDs).

All are delivered in the intimate, sometimes hushed style of this master communicator, and rarely with any sense of strain. Christoph Eschenbach, more active these days as a conductor than as a pianist, is his supportive partner.

The declamatory style is not congenial to Edita Gruberova, as shown in several among the 38 songs by Richard Strauss in her latest recorded outing in which she has to play the dramatic soprano (Teldec 44922, two CDs).

But in the intimate songs, which also show the composer at his best--”Rote Rosen,” “Die Nacht,” “Breit’ uber mein Haupt” and “Morgen” among them--Gruberova’s singing is ravishingly pure in tone and richly, unaffectedly expressive. The excellent pianist is Friedrich Haider.

Kiri Te Kanawa covers some of the same territory in her Strauss recital, with Sir Georg Solti at the piano for 17 lieder and conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the Four Last Songs (London 430 511).

The soprano is below her best form here, disclosing a high register that is beginning to wear. A more persistent problem is her inability--or unwillingness--to differentiate moods from one song to the other, while Solti’s pianism and conducting are equally brusque.