Schubert: Die Gebüsche, D646

“The music of Richard Strauss suited Popp as if she were wearing a tailor-made gown. In that composer's three songs of Ophelia, the soprano places that hapless heroine vividly before us. Gage's accompaniment deftly complements his partner's giddiness...Here, then, is a memorable reminder that we'll never stop missing Lucia Popp.” International Record Review, September 2010

“In volume four of Goerne’s Schubert edition, the song selection is still skewed towards the introspective and forlorn. Those moods are perfect for Goerne’s dark baritone...and, always, the elegantly responsive piano of Ingo Metzmacher, better known as a conductor. The pair seem very simpatico.” The Times, 28th November 2009 ****

“Although there are moments when the angst within Schubert's responses to Mayrhofer and the vanished gods could be more biting, Goerne has the measure of the noble declamation of these unique songs. When it comes to the Goethe settings, Goerne excels at recreating the uncanny metaphysical stillness of 'Meeresstille', and of the D224 'Wandrers Nachtlied'. And his final Mayrhofer 'Abschied', taken as slowly as is humanly possible, becomes a valediction of wide spaces and eloquent silences.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2010 ****

“This is a simply unmissable recital, and for two prime reasons - the grave beauty of its programme and the corresponding beauty of the singer's voice. These songs of yearning, essentially spiritual, are very personal, and the imagination never shuts down. The pianist, Ingo Metzmacher, is fully responsive to this, and the recorded sound, of both voice and piano, is warm and vivid.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2010

“The two selections from Heliopolis telescope intimate, personal dramas and larger public spectacle to bewitching effect, Goerne’s lightly burnished baritone liquescently surging and seething against the pointed accompaniment of Ingo Metzmacher...Throughout, Goerne and Metzmacher suffuse these songs with a dark, yearning poetry to discreetly powerful and wholly persuasive effect.” Michael Quinn, bbc.co.uk, 18th December 2009

“This is an unusual and wholly absorbing recital by a soprano often, mistakenly, considered no more than a singer with a lovely voice. In 1972, at the height of her appreciable powers, Janowitz impressed her Salzburg audience with this, her first recital at the Festival. Her discerning choice comprises some notable songs by Schubert rarely heard in recital and ones by his contemporary Hüttenbrenner, which Janowitz sang from manuscript copies, seldom performed since the composer's day. These are surely their first recordings.
Has there ever been such a lovely, poised account of the great Schiller-inspired song, DieGötter Griechenlands or such an ingratiating one of Sehnsucht, the Mayrhofer setting? The first offering, Im Freien, has its winning cantilena filled with gloriously sustained, long-breathed tone. The programme ends with Einsamkeit.
This grandly imaginative if slightly impersonal quasi-cantata, to a Mayrhofer text, a composition that Schubert himself thought so highly of, is a kind of a panorama of a life, ending in a wonderfully reposeful final section. Janowitz and her impressive partner perform it with total conviction, sustaining interest throughout.
Although not in Schubert's class – who is? – Hüttenbrenner reveals a talent apparently well able to encompass the meaning of poems in fluent and often imaginative writing. Orfeo provide no texts, let alone translations, but the delightful Spinnerlied must be about spinning: it's an artlessly charming song. Der Hügel is obviously about more serious matters, and in its sad course comes closes to Schubert in depth of feeling.
Frühlingsliedchen has a simple, spring-like joy to it, and an appealingly varied, strophic form. Janowitz takes the measure of them all, and adds to a gently vibrant tone many tints and touches of half-voice.
They could not have a better advocate.
The recording catches the full glow of the singer's voice. The only drawback, that absence of texts, isn't serious enough to stop acquiring this issue, given that Janowitz virtually tells you in her utterance what the songs are about.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010