Aribert REIMANN (b. 1936)
Lieder
Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
“…oder soll es Tod bedeuten?” Eight Songs and a Fragment on Poems by Heine (arranged for soprano and string quartet and linked to six intermezzi by Aribert Reimann) [25:16]
Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Ophelia-Lieder (5), WoO posth. 22 (transcribed for soprano and string quartet) [4:26]
Aribert REIMANN
Adagio – Zum Gedenken An Robert Schumann [7:36]
Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Sechs Gesänge Op. 107 (transcribed for soprano and string quartet) [9:42]
Christiane Oelze (soprano)
Leipzig String Quartet
Rec. 20-22 February 2015, Konzerthaus der Abtei, Marienmünster, Germany
MDG 30719212 [47:47]
Aribert Reimann is best known as an internationally successful opera composer. But he has long been engaged in the world of lieder, as composer, accompanist, teacher and, as presented on this disc, as an arranger. He has arranged classic German lieder for string quartet and soprano (there is also a cycle of seven Liszt songs for baritone and quartet from 2013). Here we are offered such arrangements of songs by Mendelssohn, Brahms and Schumann.
“Arranging” means different things here however. For the Brahms and late Schumann songs Reimann transcribes what the piano plays or at least suggests, so the original piano part is ‘heard’ but in a different colour. With Mendelssohn he does this too, but inserts between each song new music of his own for the string quartet. The insertions, called “intermezzi” deploy some music from the song just heard and link to the next one. Their contemporary idiom thus forms a sort of musical commentary from the present day upon the music of the past, in a continuous structure. Furthermore this is not an arrangement of one of Mendelssohn’s published song collections but a selection of Reimann’s from different sources. The common element is that every setting is of a poem by Heinrich Heine, which includes the best-known of Mendelssohn’s songs Auf Flügeln des Gesangs (“On Wings of Song”). Although the score refers to “Eight Songs”, there are ten poems in the booklet and ten tracked songs, but two pairs are run together such that the eight vocal ‘items’ are separated by six intermezzi. But the publisher’s website and the booklet notes with the disc are silent on the matter.
Brahms set five songs by Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet, for a production of the play in which a friend of his was playing the title role. He provided a piano part for rehearsal purposes (as Ophelia would sing on stage without accompaniment). He never published these folk-like simple settings, designed to depict a gradual descent into madness. Reimann's quartet version seems to enhance the poignancy of these rather atypical Brahms songs. Even the website of their publisher Schott admits “The nearly aphoristic Ophelia-songs keep closely to Brahms' original - a different compositional approach to the one in the Mendelssohn adaptation.”
Robert Schumann’s Op. 107 cycle also opens with an Ophelia song Herzeleid (“Heartache”) – and for us the watery death of Ophelia evokes Schumann’s own suicide attempt of course. Although the composition is from a period which coincides with some respite in his illness, few have made great claims for these particular songs. Aribert Reimann’s transcription integrates the vocal part into the string quartet in a way that once again seems to enhance their feeling. As with the Brahms the selection of ‘lesser’ lieder to arrange perhaps helps to provide a more sympathetic first hearing than the expected piano accompaniment could, since it is obviously quite different from the lied genre’s textural norm.
These songs are a fascinating byway for the lieder enthusiast, and it is supplemented by a short piece for string quartet by Riemann, an Adagio to the Memory of Schumann. It paraphrases two ‘funeral chorales’ which were the last things Schumann wrote in the asylum at Endenich. Their fragmentariness, and of course the circumstances of their origin, make this a touching prelude to the arrangement of Op.107. The Leipzig Quartet play it expertly, including the final fade out in high harmonics.
These performances are good ones, sensitive and at times affecting, though Christiane Oelze’s soprano sounded less than ideal at times. It is a bit colourless and unvarying. There is also a suspicion of her being a touch below the note at times, as on track 14 Mein Liebchen, wir sassen beisammen and the subsequent song. Is it harder to pitch accurately against Reimann’s string textures? I did note on the Schott website these pieces are described thus: “Level of difficulty: difficult”! The Brahms and Schumann are better in this respect than the Mendelssohn. The Leipzig Quartet sound fine throughout. The recorded sound is impressive, as is usual with an MDG production from the Konzerthaus der Abtei in Marienmünster. The booklet has some useful notes on the music, and full texts but no translations.
Juliane Banse and the Cherubini Quartet gave the first performances of the Mendelssohn and the Brahms transcriptions, and recorded those cycles (plus Reimann’s similar arrangement of Schubert’s “Mignon” songs) for Tudor in 1998, and Banse sounds fresher voiced than Oelze does here. It was well received by MWI (review). But it is currently not easy to obtain, at least on a new CD. But this is a more than serviceable successor.
Roy Westbrook
