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building
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number twenty -three
PHILIP MILLER SUGGESTS A BASIC
COLLECTION OF ART SONGS
TO THE CONNOISSEUR of the art song long playing records
are by no means an unmixed blessing. There is nothing so merciless
in showing a singer's limitations as a song recital, and when
this recital is made permanent for indefinite repetition it can be
positively cruel. A completely representative anthology of recorded
songs is therefore a manifest impossibility; any choice of ten disks
must be a compromise. For if we would include the songs that
should figure on any basic list, and these in outstanding interpretations
(for nothing less will do) we must carry along with them
more than a little unwanted repertoire.
Such a basic list should include songs by Schubert, Schumann,
Brahms, Wolf, and Strauss (possibly Mozart, Beethoven, Franz, and
Loewe); Faure, Debussy, Duparc and Poulenc; Dowland, Purcell,
and Vaughan Williams (perhaps Warlock, and Britton; MacDowell,
Griffes, and Ives); Grieg and Kilpinen; Mussorgsky (possibly
Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff). There would be a place for some
of the classic Italian masters, something old and something new
from Spain. Along with operatic arias, songs with orchestra must
be excluded. Now, how many of the right songs can you find on
current lists sung by the right singers? Such great interpreters as
Elena Gerhardt, Julia Culp, and Gerhard Hüsch have not yet been
discovered by the makers of long playing records; Clément and
Gilibert, whose famous song interpretations were never too well
represented, are known only to older collectors; even Povla Frijsh
and Eva Gauthier are conspicuous by their absence, while available
recordings of Lotte Lehmann and Elisabeth Schumann are spotty
at best. If our list is to include no songs of which we are ashamed,
and no performances below a great singer's standard, the choice is
very considerably narrowed.
It seems appropriate to begin with one of the great song cycles
of Schubert. This should not be too difficult, since we have a
choice of seven singers in Die schöne Müllerin and four in Die
Winterreise, yet in nearly every case the record leaves something to
be desired. The two best performances of Winterreise, by Victor
Carne and Hans Hotter, both lack tonal appeal, though the singers
are musicianly, and both know how to convey the meaning of the
texts. Carne, the less dramatic of the two, has the advantage of
singing the songs in the original keys. In Die schöne Müllerin
this last consideration would count for more than it does were it
not that the best of the tenors, Aksel Schi¢tz, is hampered by aging
recording and a not too happy job of transfer to LP. Dietrich
Fischer -Dieskau, assisted like Schi¢tz by the invaluable Gerald
Moore, has the benefit of modern reproduction (RCA Victor
LHMV 6). Young as this singer is, he has already proven on more
than one occasion that his is an outstanding intellect, and that he
is a musician whose quite ample and impressive voice serves only
as a vehicle for the songs he sings, which, after all, is the essence
of fine lieder- singing. I am tempted to add at least a couple more
of his recordings, but these must make way for others.
It would be pleasant to follow this recording with one of the
seven versions we have of Schumann's Dichterliebe, but incomparably
the best two of these, by Schiritz and Moore and by Panzéra
and Cortot, are now issued on the same disk in Victors "Treasury"
series. Aside from their somewhat faded reproduction, we could
hardly afford space for two performances of the same cycle! Let us
pass on, then, to the fine Hugo Wolf Recital, including the
Michelangelo Lieder, by Hotter and Moore (Angel 35057). The
singer's treatment of certain lines of the texts might well be
studied by any aspiring young artist. My third choice must again
be Wolf, but such is the variety of his musical treatment of the
various poets, such the divergence of styles between the Goethe
and Michelangelo songs we have from Hotter and those from his
Italienisches Liederbuch, of which Irmgard Seefried gives us
twenty-three (Decca DL 9743) that the balance of our list is not
thrown so tar as we might expect. The soprano's fine voice and her
appealing vocal style are at their best in these miniature dramas. I
am not con happy about the inclusion at the end of this recital of
six folk and folklike songs of Brahms, because the program would
have been better rounded with more of Wolf, yet in this way we
can represent another important lieder composer, and surely the
singing is lovely enough. Erik Werba is the accompanist.
The French repertoire offers a greater problem, not that we do
not have distinguished performances to choose from, but few of
these recitals seem to belong on our ratified list. Singher, Souzay,
and Tourel have given us programs that are too miscellaneous;
Danco s admirable Debussy does not quite match the effect of the
now old recording by Maggie Teyte; a whole disk of Poulenc sung
by Bernac would seem extravagant. I would settle, rather, on one
of the most unusual recordings in the field, in which the admirable
mezzo -soprano Irma Kolassi offers us an all but unique opportunity
to hear Fauré's late cycle, La Chanson d'Eve, and Milhaud's
affecting Poèmes Juifs, with André Collard at the piano (London
Lt. 919). As a distinguished performance admirably reproduced,
this is not matched by any of the available recordings of more
familiar Fauré. Nor do any of the recent Debussy recitals rank
with it; as for Duparc, he has yet to receive even adequate treatment
in the age of LP.
Various singers have tried their voices in programs of Italian
Arie autiche, but the results have been, to say the least, variable.
The most recent of these seems to me the most successful: indeed it
provides some of the finest singing we have had in many months.
This is the second Italian recital of Magda Laszlo, (Italien Airs),
assisted by Franz Holetschek, including arias by Vivaldi, Caldara,
Martini, Bononcini, and others (Westminster WL 5375). Three
thirteenth -century Laude from the Liuzzi collection, here attributed
to Pergolesi, are beautifully sung by the clear -voiced soprano. Perhaps
this is the place to mention the classic Spanish songs sung to
the harpsichord by Victoria de los Angeles, and the modern ones
with piano, though the program is disqualified by its coupling with
Folio's opera La Vida breve.
I should like to represent the Russians with Mussorgsky, but I
am not sufficiently impressed with the various recordings of Songs
and Dances of Death, or with available miscellaneous recitals.
Maria Kurenko has sung The Nursery along with a side of Rachmaninoff
songs, but somehow I find myself preferring her second
collection of Rachmaninoff Songs for the Rachmaninoff Society,
with Laurence Rosenthal at the piano (RS 5). Some of the songs
are well- known, though not necessarily under the titles as listed -
" "The Fountain," "It is pleasant here," "Yesterday we met." etc. One
feels that her interpretations are absolutely authoritative. Beside
this disk I would place the first selection of Hungarian Folk
Songs by Bartók and Kodály sung by Leslie Chabay with Tibor
Kozma assisting ( Bartók BRS 904). To be sure these are arrangements
of folk melodies, but they are touched with great art, and
after all they are the foundations of the musical styles of Hungary's
two great modern masters. One need not understand Hungarian to
enjoy the spirited performances.
Coming now to our own language, I must include a set of
Elizabethan Love Songs, sung in admirably clear English by the
Swiss tenor Hugues Cuenod (Lyrichord LL 37). The most affecting
number in a fine program including Dowland, Pilkington,
Jones, and Bull is the anonymous "Drink to me only with thine
eyes," done for once with the text as Ben Jonson wrote it, and to a
newly arranged harpsichord accompaniment by Claude Chiasson.
To represent our own country we have a very recent set of Charles
Ives Songs so superbly performed by Helen Boatwright and John
Kirkpatrick that the exclusion of all other Americans seems unimportant.
The songs themselves, set to poems of widely varying
merit, range from the naïve to the musically daring, yet they all
become little masterpieces in this unaffected and tonally lovely
performance (Overtone 7).
Finally, in tribute to one of our greatest vocal artists, I offer
The Art of Roland Hayes, a program ranging historically from
Guillaume de Machaut to arrangements of spirituals by Mr. Hayes
himself (Vanguard VRS 448 -9: as this is a two -disk set I will leave
the choice of one open). No need to apologize for the voice of the
sixty- eight- year -old singer; he has enough left, and he remains one
of our outstanding interpreters. The recording is unusually fine,
the singing especially well balanced with the expert piano playing
of Reginald Boardman.
RECORDS
AUGUST 1955
55