Lieder from the days
before Lieder existed? Well, there does
tend to be the idea that many of the
pieces for voice and piano by these
composers are homely little strophic
settings with elementary piano accompaniments
and ever so many verses, and indeed
they each wrote a certain number of
such songs (as did Schubert in his earliest
days). But exceptions by all three quickly
come to mind and, as this disc shows,
there is more than enough material to
fill a CD without recourse to any of
the ultra-simple ones.
And more; for while
examples of "proto-Lied" are
to be found (the opening Mozart item
and Beethoven’s Maigesang), this recital
also allows us to hear that these three
composers suggested lines of exploration
and development that Schubert and the
later Lieder composers chose not to
explore and develop. One is the cantata,
a fairly extended work in several movements,
each maybe prefaced by a recitative.
Mozart’s K.619 is declaredly an example
and Beethoven’s An die Hoffnung arguably
another. Another line is the quasi-operatic
scena – Beethoven’s Wonne der Wehmut
– while Haydn sometimes seems to suggest
an instrumental-style piece that just
happens to have words and a vocal part.
So altogether there is much to interest
here.
Robert Holl has a magnificently
firm Sarastro-like voice and years of
experience in singing Lieder, always
aiming for clarity of diction, taking
time to express the words but never
at the expense of musical line. If only
he did not apparently feel obliged to
carry the troubles of the world on his
shoulders! If you compare his Wonne
der Wehmut with that by Iris Vermillion
and Peter Stamm (on CPO), the mezzo
allows the music to flow a little more
naturally (2:44 against 2:55), expressing
a heartfelt response more through the
overall line. It’s enough to make the
difference between thinking, at the
end, that it would be nice to hear it
again, and looking anxiously at the
programme-list and thinking "only
one more to go". Then, in the Beethoven
op.48 cycle, while one would not wish
the second song to be trivialized, it
is marked "Lebhaft doch nicht zu
sehr" (Allegro ma non troppo) and
it hardly goes any faster here than
the previous song. And is the tiny no.5,
marked "Mit Kraft und Feuer",
not intended to be thrown off as a brief
moment of exaltation?
I am also puzzled by
Haydn’s Lob der Faulheit (In Praise
of Laziness), since the note by Clemens
Häslinger states that "This
cheerful little gem allows the singer
the opportunity for comic characterisation".
Since Holl sings it with a seriousness
that might not come amiss in the Lord’s
Prayer, I am left wondering if Häslinger
is having us on rather in the manner
of the students in Jerome K. Jerome’s
celebrated account of human hypocrisy,
Herr Schlossen-Bosschen’s comic song
(it was not a comic song at all but
the public, having been "tipped
off" by the students, and not wishing
to admit to ignorance of the German
language, roared with laughter throughout,
to the fury of Herr Schlossen-Bosschen).
Or maybe Häslinger is right and
Holl is not strong on humour. Having
no alternative performance to hand I
shall have to leave the question unanswered
for now.
The pianist gets things
off to a poor start, making a rallentando
at the end of every bar in Mozart’s
Abendempfindung. Since he insists on
stopping at every lamp-post even after
the voice has entered, this song becomes
rather a pain. Suffice to say that anyone
who has heard Gieseking play this accompaniment
for Elizabeth Schwarzkopf will take
a dim view of Lutz’s handling of it.
Fortunately this is not typical; the
rest is well and I can imagine that
Holl would have been delighted with
such an attentive accompanist. Listen
to the end of An die Hoffnung and hear
how the singer inflects his line, a
breath here, a comma there, and hear,
too, how the piano is so totally at
one with the singer in all these little
rhythmic inflections that the singer
might almost have been accompanying
himself. But is it advisable to indulge
the singer so completely? Harry Plunket
Greene, one of the great Lieder singers
of the early 20th Century,
thought not:
"There are
still some people who say of the
accompanist, ‘He followed the singer
beautifully’. Heaven help the singer
if he did! If the singer knows that
the accompanist will follow him,
he will count upon it; the struggle
with Nature will be too strong for
his will power and, fight as he
may, he will find himself stopping
the song to breathe." (Interpretation
and Song, 1924)
Of course Plunket Greene
did not want the pianist to plough on
regardless of the singer; he is using
a paradox to suggest that, since singers
of their nature will hold the song up
and pull phrases out of shape to suit
their pulmonary and vocal convenience,
a sympathetic accompanist can be invaluable
in calling them to heel. If Lutz had
exercised this prerogative, ever so
gently, here and there along the way,
I suggest the cumulative effect of the
recital would have been a shade less
heavy.
All the same, it is
an interesting programme sung by a fine
voice and a sensitive interpreter, and
you are not obliged to hear it all at
one go. The recording is fine, the notes
well-written and texts are provided,
but without translations.
Christopher Howell
Robert Holl (bass-baritone), David Lutz (piano)