Schubert: Du bist die Ruh D776 (Rückert)

A new and exquisite collection of German songs from counter-tenor Andreas Scholl, providing a perfect balance between text and music. The choice of music reflects Scholl’s belief that music need not be confined in performance to a particular voice type, as long as “the singer’s approach is true.”

Scholl pulls off a bravura display in Schubert’s An Mignon, singing in both the counter-tenor and baritone register. The performance of these songs reveals an intuitive understanding between singer and accompanist, Andreas Scholl and Tamar Halperin.

Two distinguished soloists – soprano Suzanne Danco and tenor Robert Tear – contribute to this disc of Schubert songs. Both of the composer’s ‘obbligato’ songs (Der Hirt auf dem Felsen and Auf dem Strom) are included, as are five of Schubert’s most popular Lieder in recordings by Danco previously unreleased on CD. But at the centre of this recital is a selection of Schubert’s Partsongs. Their origins lie in the vital demand for this kind of music in the context of the social life of Vienna during the composer’s lifetime. The male-voice quartet was a staple feature in the city’s concert halls, but even more so in the homes of the cultured middle-classes. Much of Schubert’s writing for this medium is in an ‘unbuttoned’ mood, providing material for friendly gatherings. Even so, we find among these partsongs for men’s or mixed voices, many which carry the unmistakable stamp of his genius – the gorgeous Ständchen, or the tranquil, other-worldly Nachthelle.

Famed for her highly intelligent performances and deep engagement with music, Swedish soprano Miah Persson is in great demand throughout the world. She returned to Wigmore Hall last February with internationally renowned accompanist Roger Vignoles to perform a wonderfully emotive and dramatic programme.

Opening with some of the most celebrated Schubert Lieder, Persson revealed a refined interpretation of each song, searching deep within the texts to convey emotions from agony to ecstasy. With great passion, Persson then entered the Scandinavian sound world to complete her programme with Grieg’s stormy Six Songs and a beautiful collection of Sibelius’s most evocative settings.

Compelling for her intensity and integrity as much as for her unmistakeable voice, Dame Janet Baker struck a distinctive path as a performer, primarily on the concert and recital stage. Among her most celebrated recordings are her interpretations of Elgar with Sir John Barbirolli, here complemented by songs and oratorio arias by composers such as Bach, Handel, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Fauré, Vaughan Williams and Britten.

The Lied is at the heart of Schubert’s output. Throughout his short life, and right up to the weeks immediately before his death, he took a keen interest in every aspect of this genre, which constituted the most intimate expression of the German psyche, of which Schubert was from very early on well placed to act as a vehicle for its sentiments and its torments (love, friendship, pain, loneliness), ranging widely across its joys and its sorrows in all their subtle shadings. Schubert composed quickly, occasionally writing as many as nine or ten Lieder in a single day, with a prodigious fluency that won the admiration of Schumann.

A born song-writer, he loved to perform his own Lieder, accompanying himself on the piano; he admitted that he could get carried away by singing for hours on end. In Schubert’s songs, the voice is always the focus of attention, while the piano accompaniment provides a psychological backdrop. Less discriminating in his choice of poems than Schumann or Wolf, Schubert was more interested in verbal colouring and the emotional content of a text than in its literary value, and although his some six hundred Lieder are in a wide range of forms – from simple strophic songs to dramatic scenas – they are still characterised by their exceptional simplicity, freshness and spontaneity of utterance.