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SCHUBERT: ORCHESTRAL SONGS
(DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON)
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"There is no song of Schubert’s that cannot teach us something," Brahms once observed. This 2002 live recording from Paris presents a cross-section of Schubert arrangements by later composers. Schubert’s seemingly limitless capacity for dramatic development, character portrayal, and tone painting made his songs a gold mine for orchestration. The results presented here range from Brahms’s faithful arrangement of "Memnon" to Berlioz’s extravagant rethinking of "Erlkönig." Reger’s orchestration of "Gretchen am Spinnrade" is wonderfully apt: the repeating cadences in the bass sound even more menacing in the timpani than in the piano, and that makes Gretchen’s desperation all the more apparent. Some will bemoan the loss of piano-accompanied-lieder intimacy in these settings — but it’s hard to complain when the winds of Benjamin Britten’s arrangement give the jumping trout in "Die Forelle" such vibrant new life. "An die Musik" as orchestrated by Reger has the same wistful sense of yearning as the original. Liszt offers subtle evocations of the storm in "Die junge Nonne," and it’s fascinating to compare Berlioz’s "Erlkönig" with Reger’s darker, more restrained version. Anne Sofie von Otter’s singing is technically excellent but a bit staid and unadventurous. Thomas Quasthoff, though, shows again why he is one of the world’s greatest Schubert singers, with a warmth and expressiveness in each word that continue to amaze. Claudio Abbado’s accompaniments are marvelous: he brings out detail but never overwhelms the singers. The COE’s playing is superb.
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