Quite a while back
I reviewed a disc of songs by Schubert’s
near-contemporary Carl Loewe and remarked
that, if Schubert’s own Lieder had remained
unknown, or if diffusion of them had
been delayed another fifty years, the
German Lied would probably have taken
quite a different course. It would very
likely have developed into something
much more virtuosic and elaborate, less
aimed towards domestic circumstances.
The present CD prompts the reflection
that Schubert himself could easily have
taken the Lied in a quite different
direction for here, prompted by a poet
whose interests ranged far beyond the
local and picturesque (and maybe losing,
on the way, the profound intimacy of
feeling which inspired Schubert’s settings
of Goethe, Heine, Rückert or the
much-maligned Müller), he was very
ready, especially in his early years,
to adopt a wide-ranging, often declamatory
style. Such extended works as Leichenfantasie,
Die Erwartung and Klage der
Ceres, with their different sections
making up "Lied-within-Lied"
should perhaps be called vocal cantatas;
the more mature Schubert ceased to write
such works and none of his successors
returned to them. All the same, they
stay the course remarkably well (more
than some of Schubert’s extended Lieder
in ballad-form that have come my way)
and the Leichenfantasie is certainly
a remarkable achievement (and an astonishing
choice of subject) for a fourteen-year-old.
All the same, when
Die Erwartung reaches the verse
Mein Ohr umtönt ein Harmonienfluss
our ears prick up at a genuinely Schubertian
turn of melody and we suddenly realize
that much of what we have been hearing
is not very typical of Schubert, not
only in its form but in the actual sound
of the music. Much of this sounds rather
like middle-period Beethoven.
That the two extended
settings on the first CD wear their
length so easily is probably a tribute
to Lothar Odinius who is in the best
tradition of German tenors, his timbre
round and even, sweetened in the upper
range with a touch of head voice (i.e.
the opposite of the Italian school)
and never becoming nasal or reedy as
do, well, some quite highly-regarded
countrymen of his. Attentive to words
and phrasing and unfailingly musical,
this is model Lied-singing. However,
there is a downside, which I shall come
to later.
Maya Boog is likely
to be more controversial. I was critical
of her contribution to "European
Poets, Vol. 2" in this same series
and my colleague Goran Försling
has already expressed doubts regarding
the present disc. Certainly, when under
pressure she can get squally – try the
first Des Mädchens Klage setting
– and her vibrato on top notes can be
a bit loose. On the other hand, when
she just has a warm melody in the middle
range of the voice, as in the second
and third settings of that same poem,
or the two versions of the second setting
of Thekla – she can spin an exquisite
line. She is helped by having a larger
share of genuinely Schubertian material
than Odinius, but she makes good use
of it. Wondering if I had been hard
on her I sampled the previous disc and
can happily report that she has corrected
a number of its faults here. At her
best, and in her best range, her timbre
has a girlish tone which may recall
Teresa Stich-Randall or, further back
still, Erna Berger, but she will have
to extend the same control to her top
notes if she wants future generations
to rate her at that level. Still, I
shall be interested to hear her in a
few years’ time and, whatever you may
say, it’s a voice with personality.
At the end of the disc I suddenly realised
that I couldn’t remember anything at
all about Odinius’s CD; expert professionalism
doesn’t always make for memorable results.
Excellent accompanying all through.
Readers who have been
collecting this series had better be
warned that there are signs of cost-cutting
afoot. The double pack alluded to above
came in a fat case which had room for
a booklet with extensive notes, texts
and translations. Now we get a "single"
jewel-case with a double-backed spider
to accommodate the two discs. The slimmer
booklet still has full notes by Eisenlohr,
the mastermind behind the series as
well as the pianist of most of the discs,
but for texts and translations we now
have to go to Naxos’s website. The expansive
layout of the text means that I had
to print out 27 pages for the German
texts and a further 13 for the translations.
So that means that, to the modest cost
of the two CDs you have to add the cost
of quite a long Internet connection,
at the end of which you have 40 meagrely-filled
sheets of A4 to file away somewhere
(certainly not inside the jewel-case!),
or does today’s throw-away generation
just trash them and print them out again
every time you listen to the CD? Also,
the timings are not exactly generous;
another 30-35 minutes of music could
have been accommodated here. Looked
at this way, these Naxos discs are not
quite as cheap as they seem or, from
another point of view, the additional
costs of the generally more reliable
Hyperion alternatives are not quite
as great.
There have been far
worse volumes in this uneven series
but on the whole this is one for those
collecting the lot or who particularly
need one or more of the rarer songs,
rather than a must for all Lieder-collectors.
Christopher Howell
see also review
by
Goran Forsling
Maya Boog (soprano) (2), Lothar Odinius (tenor)
(1), Ulrich Eisenlohr (piano) 
