The Skillful, Durable Schreier

One of the games we in this business play is to make little lists of favorite record ings--desert-island discs for a well-equipped last resort--that have not as yet turned up on CD and may never, we like to think, so we can both grumble and feed our nostalgia.

Consider this favorite recording, often resorted to in darkest hours: a collection of the hugely underrated songs of Felix Mendelssohn in the ever-fresh interpretations of tenor Peter Schreier, recorded in 1972 and issued then on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

It unexpectedly arrived on CD recently amid a batch of new releases on the Berlin Classics label (BC 1107). What joy!

Placing the immaculate little silver disc rather than the worn and noisy LP or the cassette tape, with its limited range, on the carousel resulted in sheer pleasure.

The order of songs had been changed. Big deal. But there were a couple of extra songs in the CD version and the piano sound was even more lifelike than on the LP, a rare positive side effect of digitalization.

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Strangely, some of the tempos were ever so slightly different: not a logical concomitant of changing technology. A glance at the printed material showed that the pianist’s name had changed, too, from Walter Olbertz to Karl Engel. An even less likely result of a change in format.

OK, you smart-bottoms: It was a new recording by the same singer and a different, at least equally skilled, pianist. This was Peter Schreier 20 years later, as effortless in delivery, as sweet and pressureless in tone, as attentive to verbal nuances as ever: by no means common occurrences in our age of premature vocal burnout.

Schreier--a misnomer if ever there was one, the German word translating into the English screamer --recorded these two-dozen gems in Cologne a year ago, aged 58, with voice and instincts virtually indistinguishable from the young but artistically mature artist of 37.

The songs that make up the core of Mendelssohn’s song output, and rank among the simplest and most sublime pleasures the German art-song has to offer, are of course here: “Schilflied,” “Der Mond,” “Gruss,” “Venezianisches Gondellied,” “Neue Liebe,” “Hexenlied and “Auf Flugeln des Gesanges.” And there isn’t a dud among the considerable remainder, nor a performance by Schreier that doesn’t penetrate to the essence of score and text. The wonder of it, now as then, is that the singer hardly seems to be working at all. Everything just flows, but never merely with surface-skimming graciousness. Engel’s accompaniments are similarly models of gentle assertiveness.

Peter Schreier seems ageless, the result above all of never forcing his light, lyric instrument into repertory to which it isn’t naturally suited. He remains an incomparable recitalist and a master of 18th-Century sacred music and opera, with only rare incursions into later, but still barely heavier material.

T he astonishing durability of Schreier’s instrument is fur ther evidenced in a new recording of Schubert’s “Winterreise” cycle (London 436 122).

Schreier, in his previous recording (for Philips) of “Winterreise” in which, as in the present instance, all the songs are sung in their original--high--keys, had to contend with the formidably aloof pianistic presence of Sviatoslav Richter.

This time around, the pianist is Andras Schiff, a much better listener. He forges with Schreier’s lovesick wanderer a powerfully communicative, moving union. The dominant personality that emerges is Schubert’s.

We are further in Berlin Classics’ debt for reissuing--these really are the Schreier originals from the 1970s--four volumes of lieder by Robert Schumann, including the major song cycles and a few dozen individual treasures to texts of Heine, Lenau, Ruckert, Eichendorff and Hans Christian Andersen. Norman Shetler is the sympathetic, resourceful pianist throughout.

Just try “Meine Rose” (on BC 2113) or “Die Lotosblume” (BC 2110) and you’re likely to be hooked. Schreier’s performances are heartbreakingly lovely.

Now please, Berlin Classics, give us also Schreier’s 1970s Schubert, and for once with English translations of the German texts. These are, after all, full-priced CDs.*