Wolf - 22 Lieder - Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Wilhelm Furtwängler (piano) - Salzburg 1953CD - ADD - German
EMI 2001
I keep comparing her Wolf with that of Gerhard, Seefried, della Casa, Ameling, Hamari, Fuchs, Margaret Price. Still Schwarzkopf's Wolf is the most convincing, true, near-to-perfection and obviously in empathy with pianist and composer.-- Amazon customer
This disc commemorates, enshrines (though that is too mortal-sounding a word) a unique and extraordinary occasion: as Walter Legge points out in his shrewd notes, the Salzburg Festival had no regular tradition of Lieder recitals when this one was planned. Wolf was perhaps closer to his and Schwarzkopf's hearts than any other Lieder composer, so they decided on the recital without having chosen an accompanist. At dinner in Turin in December 1952 (Legge wrongly places it early in 1953) Furtwangler asked Schwarzkopf if he could accompany her, and she incredulously accepted. They rehearsed prodigiously, and the Furtwangler-determined results are plain for all to hear. He accompanied her with the lid of his Steinway open (to Gerald Moore's rage), and the piano is at least on an equal footing throughout the recital. That, it seems to me, is as it should be, above all in Wolf. And this is the only Wolf-playing we have from Furtwangler, indeed the only piano playing apart from the keyboard role in the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, also from Salzburg (but in far less good sound) which EMI released last year (reviewed on page 38 of the October 2000 issue). The performances are controversial: the songs are often taken at unusual tempos, but I find them invariably illuminating, and in several songs, such as the great 'Anakreons Grab', quite magical. At times Schwarzkopf has almost to scream to hold her own, and there are places where her characteristic later archness is just beginning to creep in. Yet the ease and conviction with which she adopts to the mood of a fresh song just after closing an intense account of a quite different one is amazing; Furtwangler admittedly sets the tone instantly, with wonderfully judged characterization of the Stimmung, but it must have been a harder job for the singer to, as it were, wipe the smile off her face and adopt a grand tragic posture, or even more, vice versa. The 22 Lieder range widely, and perhaps the funny ones (which I don't ever find all that funny) have received more scintillating treatment elsewhere. The case against most of these readings has been strongly put by Robin Holloway in Song on Record, Volume 1 (edited by Alan Blyth: Cambridge University Press; 1986), where he especially criticizes the slow tempo for the opening song, 'Im Fruhling', as being lumpy. Listen and see what you think – this recital is, at the very least, an educational experience, though I would claim that it is far more than that. Michael Tanner
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