Sunday Classics: More comfort music -- I dream of Jussi singing "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair"

It would be hard to think of a happier match of performer and material than tenor Jussi Bjoerling (1911-1960) singing Stephen Foster's "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair." (By the way, whatever the record label may think, Foster's spelling was "Jeanie," not "Jeannie.")

by Ken

Last week we were talking about "comfort music," and our friend Balakirev raised the question of comfort coming from the singing of the Swedish tenor Jussi Bjoerling and the Soviet baritone Pavel Lisitsian. This struck me as an interesting idea, and I've been thinking about it.

I guess the reason I don't normally look to vocal music for my musical comfort is that the overtures I offered last week (Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor on Saturday; Weber's Oberon, and Suppé's Poet and Peasant on Sunday) provide solid 10-minute infusions of comfort. I don't know about you, but I need more comfort than I'm apt to get from the 3-5 minutes of your typical vocal excerpt, and I really don't think I would want to hear a singer -- no, not even Bjoerling -- do a cluster of such numbers. Surely it would become monotonous, no? Singers certainly don't often program recitals that way, building in enough contrast to keep the listener alert.

Nevertheless, it didn't take me long to long for one of the best matches of singer and repertory I know: Bjoerling and Stephen Foster's "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair." The version heard here was recorded in Sweden in 1948, with long-time collaborator Nils Grevilius conducting. It, but not "Jeanie," is included in EMI's two-CD "Very Best of Jussi Björling set. (But then, there's an enormous amount of Bjoerling on CD, both from the original issuing companies and from others.) The version I know better is the piano-accompanied one from Bjoerling's September 1955 Carnegie Hall recital, which was part of the single LP's worth of material that RCA issued originally; one of the happy discoveries in BMG/RCA's "Rediscovered" CD series is the complete 1955 recital. Not only was Bjoerling's English more confident in 1955, but I think the piano accompaniment, played by Frederick Schauwecker, suits the song better than the oddly tricked-up orchestral version we hear here. Which is not to say that the 1948 version is anything less than miraculous.

My first thought was to pair Bjoerling's "Jeanie" with the really spellbinding performance of Foster's "Beautiful Child of Song" included in the out-of-print Nonesuch program Songs of America by the late mezzo Jan DeGaetani (1933-1989). Okay, I could accept that this haunting performance isn't to be found, but to my horror, DeGaetani appears unknown on YouTube.

Now we could easily stick with Bjoerling. His meltingly beautiful Swedish-language "O Holy Night" is readily accessible. But then I would feel obliged to offer equal time to the great French tenor Georges Thill, whose recording of Adolphe Adam's original version, the "Cantique de Noël" (happily also accessible) is simply stupendous -- and perhaps takes us out of the "comfort music" zone, for Thill hears the music in almost martial terms. When he commands, "Peuple à genoux" ("People, on your knees"), I think you'll find yourself dropping to the floor. (In fairness, he is every bit as commanding in getting us back on our feet, with "Peuple debout" at 3:01.)

An obvious comfort number would be Schubert's "Serenade," which we could listen to with ravishing pleasure as performed in the above-mentioned 1955 Carnegie Hall recital. Instead I thought we would be serenaded by the tragically short-lived German tenor Fritz Wunderlich. He doesn't quite match Bjoerling in sheer liquid ease or elegance, but then, who does? The pianist is Hubert Giesen.

(Note: The spectacular group of seven Schubert songs that appeared as the fourth-side filler for Wunderlich's still-indispensable remake of Schubert's great youthful song cycle Die schöne Müllerin has been orphaned on CD. Three songs -- "Die Forelle," "Frühlingsglauben," and "Heidenröslein" -- were shoehorned on as fillers for the DG Originals issue of the Schöne Müllerin,which I consider a basic-library item. However, they all appear in the expanded-for-CD version of Wunderlich's Beethoven-Schubert-Schumann program.)

There's a clip, from the Schubert biopic Blossom Time, of the quintessential Viennese tenor, Richard Tauber, impersonating the composer -- accompanying himself at the piano, of course -- singing the "Serenade." The performance is on the quick side to allow Tauber his full vocal refulgence, but is certainly worth a look, and the clip is filled out with assorted other Tauberiana.



If we may indulge one last bit of comfort, this time from the ladies, could we really not include Brahms's "Lullaby"? YouTube is littered with hundreds of performances, vocal and otherwise, mostly by people who don't have the talent, skill, or sense to be embarrassed. It may be a simple song, but the simplicity is deceptive -- there's really no way of fudging the evenness and assuredness of line required, and any attempts to call attention to oneself will be instantly recognized and kill the performance dead. The singer here is the American soprano Felicia Weathers, and she does okay in this difficult assignment.



And whom, you may ask, might I really like to have sing me to sleep? Well, Christa Ludwig gave an unforgettable performance as the only encore for the Carnegie Hall lap of her yearlong "farewell" tour, but it wasn't included in the CD she recorded at the time. Hmm, I see there's a recording by Erna Bergerin the CD devoted to that singularly communicative soprano in Decca's "The Singers" series. I'll bet that's yummy.


UPDATE: LIKE A "VAPOR" OR A "ZEPHYR"?

A commenter notes that in the first stanza of "Jeanie" Bjoerling sings "floating like a zephyr," whereas another tenor -- John McCormack? -- sings "floating like a vapor." In fact Bjoerling sings "zephyr" both times: "Borne like a zephyr on the sweet summer air" and "Floating like a zephyr on the soft summer air." The printed edition I consulted has "vapor," but I assume there must be a variant version. In any case, after all these years of listening to Jussi sing "zephyr," I have a hard time hearing it any other way.

By the way, we could certainly have pushed our comfort-music drive in the direction of one of McCormack's matchless recordings of his Irish favorites -- say, "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." Is it possible to resist the young McCormack singing, "And when Irish eyes are smiling, sure they'll steal your heart away." (Note: There have been scads of McCormack CDs, and I haven't heard any of them. You do want to steer toward the early ones, though -- say, pre-1925.)

While we're on the subject of other possibilities, the recording I would have liked to represent Fritz Wunderlich with was the "Midnight" quartet from Flotow's Martha, from the EMI LP of excerpts he recorded with Anneliese Rothenberger, Hetty Plümacher, and Gottlob Frick -- pure vocal gold. (Amazon has a listing for an EMI "DRM,"whatever that is, of the Rothenberger-Wunderlich Martha excerpts, but lists it as currently unavailable ("We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock"). There were accessible options: the classic Caruso recording (in Italian, of course, so that "Mitternacht" becomes "Mezzanotte," with the extra syllable squeezed in) with Frances Alda, Josephine Jacoby, and Marcel Journet, but the sound seems to me to do less justice to the voices, especially Caruso's, than some transfers I've heard of the original 78. You can hear this magical quartet -- in English! ("Mitternacht" becomes "Twelve o'clock," quite plausibly since the foursome is hearing the hour sounded) -- from a 1961 live performance (I guess we're not supposed to say from where) with Richard Tucker, Victoria de los Angeles, Rosalind Elias, and Giorgio Tozzi; it's at 1:04 of the clip. The 10:11 clip goes on to include the dull plot business that ends Act II -- and exposing us to the creepy bass of Lorenzo Alvary as Lord Tristan -- and on into Act III, with Tozzi sining Plumkett's "Porterlied," or I guess "Ale Song.")

If we'd gone the Martha quartet route, though, how could we have stopped short of Mozart's two unique, sublime "parting" ensembles: the (post-parting, actually) trio "Soave sia il vento" from Così fan tutte, and the farewell quintet from Act I of The Magic Flute. And then, on the subject of comfort, how could we not include the supremely human sextets from The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni?

All in good time, I guess.


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