Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Die Schöne Müllerin D795
Konstanin Krimmel (baritone), Daniel Heide (piano)
rec. 2022, Markus-Sittikus-Saal, Hohenhems, Austria
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
Alpha Classics 929 [70]
The heady world of Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony might seem a world away from Schubert’s first great song cycle but, in reviewing John Wilson’s recent recording of that Russian masterpiece, I found myself asking the question whether a recording that beautifully and accurately reproduced the notes on the pages of the score could be sufficient without extraneous, particularly emotive, elements being required? Such a question loomed up once again in my mind as I listened to this new recording of Die Schöne Müllerin. Whereas with Rachmaninov the issue was a relative absence of Slavic passion, with this new Schubert recording what is missing is the kind of dramatic word painting we have come to take for granted in Lieder singing. The questions raised by this performance were: is it essential? And even, is it desirable?
To begin with this might well be the most beautiful singing of the cycle I have ever heard. Krimmel’s baritone is a thing of gorgeous wonder seemingly smooth and rich in every register. His breathing is so natural as to make it seem like he barely breathes at all. This is no bland outpouring of agreeable tone like Karajan drowning some poor unsuspecting Baroque music in treacle. Krimmel’s musicality is subtle and fully engaged with the detail of Schubert’s writing. A few songs in, I wondered if I might get bored of such a mellifluous outpouring of gorgeous tone but if anything I became more gripped as the work proceeded which caused me to arrive at the question with which I started this review: is singing Schubert’s notes as sensitively and beautifully as possible sufficient?
As with the John Wilson Rachmaninov recording, to my surprise I found that it was hard to resist the conclusion that Yes it is more than enough.
I must insist at this juncture that Krimmel’s singing is never boring for the simple reason that what Schubert wrote is never boring. He is enormously aided in this regard by a like minded accompanist content to let the music do the talking where often Schubert’s piano part is mined for quasi opera. Daniel Heide is peculiarly sensitive to the harmonic progression of Schubert’s songs, not just the effects those harmonies produce.
Likewise Krimmel’s diction is admirably clear but he almost never underlines key words three times in red pen as it were. If we are more used to words having equal status in singing this music – and sometimes, mentioning no names, taking precedence over music – this is a recording that resolutely puts music first – shouldn’t it have left me shortchanged? Again, it didn’t.
Krimmel and Heide are very good in the more optimistic songs of the first half where their approach freshens up songs that are almost too well known but the acid test for any new recording of this virtually over recorded song cycle comes in the darker songs of the second part.
I won’t pretend that the more dramatic moments lack a certain theatricality but they don’t lack depth. For some listeners, Die liebe Farbe will seem comatose compared to other versions but I enjoyed the opportunity, for once, to just hear the melody Schubert wrote without the refrain distorted in order to convey heartbreak – the heartbreak is in the melody. We have grown so used to hearing Schubert as a kind of proto expressionist that such a musical based approach is quite startling. I had the good fortune to review a magical account of Winterreise a little while ago from Wilmering and Boertien which, following research in contemporary performance practice, arrived at a very similar approach with the theatre in the music rather than the performance.
The very beauty of Krimmel’s singing and Heide’s playing make the final three songs even more affecting as for example when the major returns in Trockne Blumen. A more melodramatic way with this moment would shatter its magic where Krimmel and Heide keep it simple. The subtle ache of Krimmel’s singing at the start of Die Müller und der Bach says so much more than accounts that seek to play out the narrator’s mental state more graphically. Schubert seems to be saying in these songs that even as the narrator moves toward his solitary death there is consolation in nature and in art if it can be found. The tragedy of the narrator is that he is already beyond such consolation.
In the final song, the steady beauty of tone Krimmel has maintained throughout seems ideal for the singing of the stream at a remove from the transitory human agony of the suicide. Perhaps we hear something of Schubert’s own isolation facing the likelihood of an early death and how that removes him from the more innocent world of his peers. Krimmel uses his liner notes to make timely and pertinent remarks about the epidemic of young male suicides in our contemporary society and correctly lays the blame at the feet of such isolation. Out of his own alienation, however, Schubert wrote music which breaks down those mental walls and allows even the most distressed listener to feel they are not alone. Krimmel’s warm baritone in this last song of the cycle sounds like the warm embrace of an empathetic listener.
This will not be a version for all listeners but anyone who loves good singing for its own sake should give it a try. It is more than that, though, allowing different kinds of details to be heard than can be found in other versions. As with John Wilson’s Rachmaninov, it freshened up my ears and got me listening again with renewed care and interest.
David McDade
Help us financially by purchasing from
