[4/1/2012] With a concerted effort we can get through half of Mahler's "Songs of a Wayfarer" (okay, there are only four) (continued)

Friday night we heard baritone Thomas Allen sing the second Wayfarer song, "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld," from this 1991 performance with the notable Mahler conductor Václav Neumann. Here they do a lovely job with the opening song, "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht."


As I noted Friday night, althought the texts of the Wayfarer Songs were written by Mahler himself, they're very much in the spirit of the folk-poetry anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), which was so important to Mahler at this stage of his creative love. Ordinary folks suffering thwarted love and the immersion in nature are fundamental Wunderhorn motifs. At the same time, it's not just the theme of a jilted lover that calls to mind Schubert's Winterreise (Winter Journey); in the last song, as we'll hear eventually, there's even a crucial episode that involves the singer stopping by a roadside linden tree.

One curious feature of the Wayfarer Songs is the drastic reduction -- and in the case of the third song outright elimination -- of an instrumental introduction.

So let's listen to the opening song. In today's selections the ladies are overwhelming the gents, even though the songs -- like those of Schubert's Winterreise -- seem clearly written for a man. In the case of Mahler's cycle, and of his Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) as well, the songs generally wind up a more comfortable fit for a low-voice female than for her male counterpart, both interpretively and vocally. (From the vocal standpoint, when the vocal line rises up, it pushes the baritone right into the difficult area of the vocal "break" between chest and head registers.)

We've got an interesting male performance of each song, and on the female side we'll hear both songs sung by the full-voice mezzo Yvonne Minton (with Sir Georg's vivid accompaniments) and a full-fledge contralto, one of our go-to Mahlerites, Maureen Forrester. (The weight of Forrester's contralto will really make its mark in the later songs.)

MAHLER: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
(Songs of a Wayfarer)

i. "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht"
("When my darling has her wedding day")

Yvonne Minton, mezzo-soprano; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded Mar.-Apr. 1970

Maureen Forrester, contralto; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Dec. 28, 1958

Thomas Quasthoff, baritone; Vienna Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez, cond. DG, recorded June 2003

Now let's hear "Ging heut' Morgen" again, in context, and note the way the almost thrown-away ending seems to nullify all the merry-making that precedes it. If you're thinking this may have consequences in the later songs, you're right.

ii. "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld"
("Went this morning across the field")

Yvonne Minton, mezzo-soprano; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded Mar.-Apr. 1970

Maureen Forrester, contralto; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Dec. 28, 1958

Andreas Schmidt, baritone; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Jesús López-Cobos, cond. Telarc, recorded Apr. 30-May 1, 1991


LET'S REMEMBER THAT THE WAYFARER SONGS WERE
FIRST WRITTEN WITH JUST PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT

Friday night we heard two recordings of the piano version of "Wenn mein Schatz" by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, widely admired -- though not so much by me -- for his Mahler, both with famous pianist-conductors, first with Leonard Bernstein at the piano, then with Daniel Barenboim. At the time I wrote that these were the only piano versions I could think of in my collection. Naturally it didn't take much additional thinking to enable me to think of two more, from collections where they're shoehorned in with selections of Mahler's "early" songs. I suppose it's plausible enough to think of the Wayfarer Songs as the culmination of Mahler's early songs, and their inclusion certainly increases the repertory appeal of the discs in question.

Since both of the singers in question made fairly famous recordings of the orchestral versions, I though we'd pair them. Note that in Janet Baker's case -- yes, now we're going to hear both songs from that wonderful recording of the cycled with Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra -- the piano recording was made a lot of years after the orchestral one, and the voice sounds it; note that Dame Janet takes very much the same broad tempos in these songs that she did with Sir John, but it doesn't work nearly as well. In Hampson's case, the Mahler songs he recorded with Leonard Bernstein are the best things I've heard him do.

JANET BAKER
i. "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht"
ii. "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld"

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Geoffrey Parsons, piano. Hyperion, recorded Feb. 24-25, 1983
i. "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht"

ii. "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld"

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded May 4, 1967

THOMAS HAMPSON
i. "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht"
ii. "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld"

Thomas Hampson, piano; David Lutz, piano. Teldec, recorded in London, January 1992

Thomas Hampson, baritone; Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live, February 1990


MAYBE THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO TAKE A
LISTEN-OVER-TIME TO FISCHER-DIESKAU'S MAHLER

For many people. of course, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is the Mahler singer. I certainly don't dismiss him in this repertory, and indeed we've heard some pretty nice performances (I know I should offer links, but I'm just not up to digging them out; does anyone care?). But in general his approach -- with all that teasing overemphasis, of the "Look, Ma, I'm interpreting" school, has the effect of taking me, at least, away from the basic sense of the songs. I don't get "interpretive insight"; I get mostly cheesy vocal effects.

As I noted, we heard his piano-accompanied recordings of "Ging heut' Morgen" Friday preview. Here are his three orchestral recordings (at least the three I'm familiar with0, which cover a whopping 37-year span, beginning with the one made with leftover time from the Furtwänlger-EMI Tristan und Isolde, in which Fischer-Dieskau sang Kurwenal. As far as I know, this is still Furtwängler's only recorded Mahler.

i. "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht"
ii. "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld"

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Philharmonia Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, recorded June 24-25, 1952

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded December 1968

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Berlin Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Sony, recorded Apr. 12-17, 1989


IF YOU CAN'T WAIT FOR THE FOLLOW-UP POST
WITH THE TWO REMAINING WAYFARER SONGS . . .

You can cheat. To hear all four songs sung by Yvonne Minton, Janet Baker, and Maureen Forrester, you can click here.


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