.
I don’t write
about recordings. Well, not since the days when I penned my book Musical Theatre on Record, when
listening to end-to-end LPs for nine months, and My Fair Lady discs, one after the other, for ten days, put me off
records for so long, that even now – 15 years later -- I haven’t recovered.
And then, well,
with one thing and another, music went out of my life.
Live music has now
come cavalcading thoroughly back, but recordings? Paul has done his best.
Tempted me with discs of Mendelssohn duets and viola music ... all my
favourites … but it’s still a struggle. Maybe because my dear departed Ian
(died 2006) was a famous record collector.
Fast forward to
2014. I still don’t really buy recordings. Except when Paul takes me to
Dussmann, post-concert and a few beers, and then I often make the awful mistakes
(eg the complete Handel oratorios). As always, most of my CD intake is in the
way of gifts, usually from friends or young artists … I’m an honest man, and
those ‘reviews’ are private.
Well, this year I’ve
hit gold! First, I had the promising demo record of New Zealand singer Shaan
Antunovic, and then….
Beginning of
article proper.
In my very young
days, there were three volumes of music, on the brought-from-Vienna piano, in
our New-Zealandish house. Underneath the Austrian ceramic ‘death mask’ my
mother always hated. Two of them were volumes of Schubert songs (which I gave
away to a young singer, and have regretted it ever since, because he’ll never
sing them), the third was Löwe. I tried. He was the more difficult to play and
sing … ‘Prinz Eugen’ was good … but I hadn’t heard of him …
Dammit. Dad, why
didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t I persist. Why did I only play Schubert’s ‘Erlkönig’
and not Löwe’s as well?
So, half a century
on Löwe has come back into my life. On a friendly, gifted CD, modestly entitled
‘Carl Loewe Lieder & Balladen’.
I didn’t know the
singer (I don't know any singers!), but I’d just heard the pianist. Five stars. So I actually played it.
After a few beers. And then I had to play it again, next morning, to be sure
that it wasn’t just the beers … and I was right, this CD is outstanding.
It’s not my
business to extol Löwe. He is one of the greatest of all Lieder composers. In
my opinion, just about the greatest. What power, what drama, what melody … He
set those same well-known words that so many C19th songwriters set, and oh!
what he made of them! Well, comparisons are invidious, I guess … but just
listen to what he did with the Erl King!
Actually, listen
to it on this recording. There can’t be a better one. I don’t know the work of Roman
Trekel, although I realise he is a well-known Kammersänger, but all I can say
is, I think that he is the most stunning Lieder singer – especially for this
type of song -- that I’ve ever heard. A mature, wide-ranging Verdi baritone
crossed with the talents of a chansonnier. No! I’m not exaggerating. I’ve just
listened to the whole disc yet again, to make sure I wasn’t deceiving myself.
It’s a doozie! A triumph.
I’m not going to
enumerate, track by track. It would sound like a great gush. Every single number
is a joy (OK, Erlkönig is, of course, my favourite); and vocalist, pianist
(Daniel Heide) and composer – with a little help from Goethe et al – have here
made a recording which is my most liked of this year.
Maybe I have really
do have to go back to listening to recorded music again.
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