Placeholder text
Lieder (Orchestriert) (Fc)
Lieder (Orchestriert) (Fc)
0 - Default Title
Description
She catches each phase of Gretchens mounting ecstatic agitation, and spins a rapt, sustained line in Im Abendrot and Nacht und Traume the latter perhaps the supreme test of legato in all Schubert.
In extreme contrast, she exploits the coppery depths of her mezzo-soprano in brilliantly characterized performances of Gruppe aus dem Tartarus and the Berlioz Erlkönig, in which the female voice enhances the innocence and pathos of the child, and the seductive eeriness of the ghostly Erlking. Von Otters gift for inhabiting rather than merely relating a song even informs her delicious encore, Geheimes, where she perfectly catches the mood of shy, excited complicity.
With his warm, mahogany baritone, Thomas Quasthoff likewise not only sings beautifully but lives each song intensely. The variety and intensity of his soft singing, and his care for a true legato line, are movingly heard in Du bist die Ruh Schuberts supreme expression of an ideal, transcendent love and in his extraordinarily tender, mesmeric performance of Memnon.
He is in his element, too, in the dramatic songs, whether in the mingled nobility and sneering defiance of Prometheus more a cantata than a true Lied or the youthful, devil-may-care bravado of An Schwager Kronos, enhanced by free-ringing top notes. After his chillingly immediate account of the Reger Erlkonig, Quasthoffs encore is Standchen from Schwanengesang, a song made famous in transcriptions ranging from the tasteful to the downright kitsch. Here the unlikely figure of Jacques Offenbach gives Schuberts bittersweet serenade a distinctly Gallic makeover, complete with trilling, twiddling woodwind and faintly sleazy-sounding cornets.
Richard Wigmore
Product details
Release Date:
2013-02-22
Publication Date:
2013-02-22
Publisher:
Deutsche Grammophon (Universal Music)
Languages:
Original:
English
Currently sold out