Naxos
2006
Schubert: Poets Of Sensibility, Vol. 4
About This Album
These are all early Schubert songs, and few of them are very known; one, Die Mainacht, is sometimes performed along with a Brahms setting of the same poem by Ludwig Hölty. Fortepianist and liner note writer Ulrich Eisenlohr tries to claim that in these songs Schubert "developed the technical command that gave him assurance in his decisive steps toward...revolutionary songwriting," which seems hard to accept inasmuch as Schubert was writing revolutionary Goethe settings like Gretchen am Spinnrade at around the same time as these songs. The music on this disc is better appreciated on its own terms; most of the songs are strophic, and there are various examples of Schubert's way of using very small musical gestures to add psychological depth to a strophic setting -- depth that sometimes exceeds what's found in the original poem. There are a few unusual items here, none more so than Klage um Ali Bey, a comic song with an Arabic setting.

Baritone Wolfgang Holzmair and soprano Birgid Steinberger aren't instantly compelling vocalists, but they interpret these songs sympathetically. Fortepianist Eisenlohr is a standout accompanist, and his instrument, a Hammerflügel of Schubert's day, seems to come closer to a merger with the vocal line than modern instruments generally can. As with other Naxos discs, no texts are included, which is bad -- and what's worse is that when AMG tried the link given to texts on the Internet, it was broken. That would seem to diminish the disc's appeal to average listeners, but for Schubert completists it offers competent renderings. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide
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