Schumann: Liederkreis, Op. 39 - download (MP3 & FLAC)

Recordings: Dichterliebe: December, 18, 2007 , Liederkreis: March 11, 2009 in Berlin.

Arranging songs to be played on an instrument invariably raises the question of whether the music will still make sense when stripped of the words, especially in the case of a composer like Schumann. Listeners will find their own answers to this question, based on each individual’s preferences. Expressed poetically, Schumann’s intentions are perhaps best captured in a quotation attributed to E.T.A. Hoffmann: “Where language stops, music begins.” Martin Stegner won a scholarship to the Herbert von Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic. After spending three years as solo viola with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester he moved to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Tomoko Takahashi received her first piano lesson at the age of four in her native Japan. After taking her final examination in Tokyo in 1988, Takahashi began studying at the Berlin University of the Arts on a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service, passing her concert examination with distinction in 1995. She has twice won the Arthur Schnabel Competition in Berlin. She now lives and works in Berlin as a freelance pianist. Tomoko Takahashi and Martin Stegner have played together for thirteen years.

Critically acclaimed Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, who records exclusively for Naïve, releases her second solo recording for the label featuring a selection of fine lieder and two major song cycles by Schumann. She is accompanied by American pianist, Daniel Blumenthal.

Following her critically praised debut solo CD of French mélodies (L’Heure exquise) multi-award winning Canadian contralto, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, returns with her second eagerly anticipated solo album on Naïve. Acknowledged as one of the foremost interpreters of her generation in the Baroque and Romantic repertoires, Lemieux ventures into the wonderfully passionate and poetic world of Schumann lieder.

The programme opens with the stunning song cycle, Liederkreis Op.39. Written in May 1840, the cycle comprises of twelve songs based on poems by Joseph Eichendorff. Though the cycle presents no intelligible narrative framework, the result is a cycle that is completely coherent, almost a dream, a masterpiece on a par with Schubert’s Winterreise, consisting of a legendary ballad, mysterious nocturnes, meditations on love, and surges of passion: Romanticism at its best! Two months later, Schumann composed Frauenliebe und Leben Op.42. The songs describe the successive stages in a woman’s life: Her first love, engagement, marriage, motherhood to the continuation of her love for her husband after his death. This very intimate cycle often expresses happiness tinged with sorrow and a feeling of tragedy pervades the work, even amidst the joys of marriage. Marie-Nicole Lemieux’s dramatic qualities suit this cycle perfectly. To complete this programme of pieces by Schumann, Lemieux has chosen some other songs by the composer – Stille Tränen, Die Löwenbraut, Loreley, Er ist’s, Widmung,Der Nussbaum – perfect for her warm contralto voice.

The British mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, twice nominated for a Grammy, here performs a collection of songs by Robert Schumann, which combines two song cycles from the extremely prolific song year 1840 with several songs from the composer’s last years. She is accompanied by Eugene Asti.

Sarah Connolly fell in love with Schumann’s songs in her youth. She has sung them since her early days as a performer and in the booklet she and Eugene Asti write, ‘at the heart of Schumann’s music on this recording lie a profound melancholy and a personal and completely honest, open-hearted empathy for the poetry, which is totally disarming. All the stories and situations depicted in these songs were so much a part of the composer’s own life experience that we just cannot help but be touched and moved by them. Perhaps it is for these reasons that our love for Schumann is especially great, and we feel privileged to be able to share this extraordinary music with you’.

It is often claimed that Schumann’s late songs, which include the first seven on this CD, show a composer in decline – a charge that is refuted by such wonderful Lieder as the Wilhelm Meister settings and ‘Nachtlied’ (Goethe), ‘Der Einsiedler’ (Eichendorff), ‘Aufträge’ (L’Egru), ‘Mein schöner Stern!’ (Rückert), ‘Requiem’ (Dreves), the Lenau settings of Op. 90 and the Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, all of which are as fine as anything Schumann wrote in 1840, his great ‘song’ year.

The album’s key work is the rarely recorded Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, songs on five poems attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots. They were his last Lieder and the most austere that Schumann ever wrote. He composed the set in 1852 during a period of deep depression and offered the work as a Christmas present to his wife, Clara. It is also matched here by ‘Requiem’, setting a translation by Leberecht Blücher Dreves of an old sacred Latin text. This requiem, from Op. 90, was one of four that Schumann composed in the last years of his creative life, and it seems likely that the proliferation of such settings around 1850 had symbolic import – ‘requiems, after all, are written for oneself’, as Schumann once confided to a friend.

One the finest Lieder singers and one of the most prolific recording artists of his generation, the great German baritone, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, possessed a virtually flawless vocal technique, a remarkable ability to convey the right tonal colour and nuance of a musical phrase, as well as a wonderful command of rhythm.

This re-issue brings together three of Fischer-Dieskau’s most famous recordings, that of Schumann’s Liederkreis with the pianist Gerald Moore, a partnership which would produce a remarkable artistic and creative fusion over the next quarter century.

The 1952 recording of the song-cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, conducted by Furtwängler, was made at a time when the music of Mahler was little known or heard outside German-speaking countries, a bold and inspired choice.