Schubert: Der Musensohn, D764 (Goethe)

Multi-award winning opera singer Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, praised for the ‘pristine beauty of her lyric soprano’ (The Guardian), was revered in opera houses worldwide and is perhaps most famous for her Mozart roles. However, she was also at home on the concert stage and this collection combines her acclaimed portrayals of Donna Elvira, Countess Almaviva and Richard Strauss’s Marschallin, among others, with her affecting interpretations of lieder and song-cycles.

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.

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.