WOLF, E.W.: 4 Symphonies

Vocal Recital: Kuhse, Hannelore - WOLF, H. / BERG, A. / REGE

Classical Music

Classical Music

Wolf, H.: Italienisches Liederbuch

"I am too cowardly to be a proper composer," Hugo Wolf confessed to a Viennese friend when he was barely 28 years old. And the result of his introspection was not so wrong: everything in his life, not only composing, proceeded in explosive spurts. He wandered through the deepest emotional valleys, suddenly flew up into the highest regions, suffered agonies when he couldn't think of anything to say, shouted his enthusiasm about a successful piece to the whole world and still managed to produce a respectable, albeit fragmentary oeuvre, from which the early poem Penthesilea after Heinrich von Kleist's tragedy of the same name stands out as a symphonic masterpiece. The Austrian baritone Benjamin Appl and the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, led by its principal conductor Simon Gaudenz, have prefaced this highly dramatic monolith with twelve selected songs, most of which were orchestrated by their author himself: a dozen small, finely polished gems based on texts by Goethe, Mörike and Heyse, whose subtle arrangements leave no doubt that Hugo Wolf would certainly have had the makings of a "proper composer". Whether then, of course, the ingenious things would have been created that posterity owes to him - that is another matter.

Ernst Wilhelm Wolf’s contemporaries called him the “Weimar Wolf,” a fitting label, inasmuch as Weimar’s musical environment greatly influenced the life of this teacher, concertmaster, and organist who advanced to the post of chapel master to Duchess Anna Amalia, a noted patron of the arts. Even though he was a thorn in the flesh for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany’s prince of poets, he remained true to the court and his duchess over the decades. He even declined with thanks an offer from the King of Prussia, Frederick II, to succeed Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Berlin. However, the fact that Wolf highly valued Bach’s empfindsamer Stil and the style of the Berlin chapel master Carl Heinrich Graun is clearly audible in his works. During recent years Wolf’s instrumental music has attracted increasing attention. Now Michael Alexander Willens has recorded Wolf’s oratorio Jesu, deine Passion will ich jetzt bedenken. In this work, like Graun in his Tod Jesu, the composer, who in 1756 was only a little over twenty, reflects on the Passion of Christ and relives it with deep emotion. An absolute masterpiece from the age of musical sensibility with arias of great melodic appeal that are guaranteed to leave no heart unmoved!

Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (1735-92) developed into a central figure in Weimar’s music world after 1760. Among the chamber genres Wolf devoted himself extensively to was the string quartet, or quartet for four stringed instruments, which for him referred to the older Northern and Central German quadro, a trio sonata with an additional melody part set contrapuntally in trio against a basso continuo. The three quartets, Op. 3, form the genuine high point in Wolf’s quartet oeuvre. His predilection for contrast and his compositional techniques lend these compositions their special appeal.

Classical Music

“And all, all was well again! / […] Love and pain / and world and dream!” So ends the fourth of Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, settings of texts the composer had partly taken from the collection “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (the lad’s magic horn), recompiling and extending them. Inspired by Franz Schubert’s Wilhelm Müller song cycles, the brief cycle depicts the sorrowful tale of a lover who as a “journeyman” is no less than the Romantic “wanderer”. As with Schubert, Mahler’s protagonist transcends his crisis, the conclusion pointing “in the sense of an eternity that is to be expected” (Christian Gerhaher) to his redemption. But first he passes through various relay-stations that are part dreamlike vision, part earthbound reality. Konstantin Ingenpaß´debut album with works by Wolf, Liszt, Ullmann and Mahler in chamber-musical arrangements - under the headline: World and Dream.

“Even little things can delight us, Even little things can be precious.” The first words of the first song in Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch are both manifesto and Credo. Wolf (1860 – 1903) felt keenly the sting of being labelled a Lieder-Komponist (song composer). He could recognize when composing his songs that “what I write now, I write for posterity too.” A passionate advocate of Wagner’s music, he brought to song the tonal innovations of the world post-Bayreuth: “Wölferl’s own howl,” he dubbed his unique style. Wolf’s textual source for his songbook was the Italienisches Liederbuch, published in Berlin in 1860 and containing translations by Paul Heyse (1830 – 1914) of Italian folk poetry. He wrote the compositions during three working phases: Part I with 22 songs in autumn 1890 and in late 1891, Part II with 24 songs in spring 1896.

Throughout the 46 pieces, we hear a man and a woman trace the chronicle of a love-affair, from initial ardor to rupture and ending. An encyclopedic panoply of the moods and faces of love ensues, complete with quarrels, mockery, nocturnal serenades, distress, masochism, suffering, rage, and finally, a parting of the ways. Wolf had a genius for the piano accompaniment regarding sensibility for the text and colorful, even illustrative composing: commenting, caricaturing, sometimes warm-hearted, sometimes quipping and full of humor. Pianist Frank-Immo Zichner uses this as multi-layered basis for Mirella Hagen and Tobias Berndt who vividly play their parts.

"No Wolf lover can afford to miss [this].

There are numerous felicities to savor, and many more to discover. Listen to how Fischer-Dieskau's rhythmic bite and impeccable diction in Jägerlied still manage to impart a sense of legato, or, by contrast, a dulcet sotto voce in the diminuendos of Peregina I's opening phrases. Who else can get away with outsize dynamics in Lebe wohl and avoid melodrama, yet manage a rare fusion of tenderness and austerity in the often sentimentalized Verborgenheit? I can answer that question in two words: Sviatoslav Richter. This pianist takes not one note of Wolf's frequently unwieldy piano parts for granted, whether making Fussreise's interludes sound simpler than they actually are to play well, or effortlessly sailing through Abschied's wacky postlude with a straight face."

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Reviewing earlier release of this recording

Hugo Wolf’s most poignant songs were inspired by poet-priest Eduard Mörike, whose lifelong struggle with the moral turmoil caused by an early love affair appealed to similar traumas in Wolf. Baritone Dietrich Henschel performs Wolf’s Mörike songs with Philippe Herreweghe conducting the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, but he also stars in a film (directed by Clara Pons, included on DVD) which dramatizes the content of the songs, exploring the thin line between erotic and mystic love, but ultimately depicting a tormented soul’s quest for redemption and release.

With the present recording the thirty-year-old Fischer-Dieskau demonstrates his subtle art of textual exegesis, bathed in the dolcezza and suavity of his still young baritone voice. The selection from Hugo Wolf's Mörike Lieder, composed in a frenzy of creativity in 1888, comes from the archives of the former RIAS broadcasting company in Berlin (known today as DeutschlandRadio Kultur) and is now made available for the first time after careful restoration. Fischer-Dieskau is mainly accompanied by Hertha Klust, his pianist of choice in the early 50s. Hardly any musician left behind as many recordings as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whose career began in the early postwar years and only came officially to an end in 1993. Besides his commercial recordings, a number of undiscovered gems lie in the archives of Europe's radio stations. Some of them will be released by audite in the near future.

Composed in feverish bouts interrupted by long periods of inaction, Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch was brought to completion in 1896. The 46 songs are settings of poems in German by Paul Heyse, after Italian folk songs – miniatures with a duration of less than 2 minutes in most cases. Heyse’s collection numbered more than 350 poems, but Wolf ignored the ballads and laments, and concentrated almost exclusively on the rispetti. These are short love poems which chart, against a Tuscan landscape, the everyday jealousies, flirtations, joys and despairs of men and women in love. Heyse’s translations often intensify the simple Italian of the original poems, and in their turn, Wolf’s settings represent a further heightening of emotion. Miniatures they may be, but many of the songs strike unforgettably at the heart. When Wolf’s songbook is performed in its entirety, it is usually done by a male and a female singer, although this is not specified in the score. It is not uncommon for them to be transposed, but the songs are written for high voices, and are here performed by a soprano and a tenor – Carolyn Sampson and Alan Clayton – with Joseph Middleton at the piano. The performers have chosen to present the songs in the order they appear in the printed collection, dividing them between themselves.

REVIEWS:

The Italian Songbook consists of two groups of songs. The first group, consisting of 22 songs, was set in 1890 – 1891 and the second group with 24 songs in 1896. Strictly speaking it isn’t a cycle, and in some recordings the interpreters have opted for their personal order of the songs, but many stick to the order in which Wolf published them, and this is also the case with the present issue. The two singers are well-matched. Carolyn Sampson has been an avid advocate for baroque music for many years, but she has also ventured into art songs...Tenor Allan Clayton‘s career has focused on opera – his Peter Grimes at Covent Garden recently was a resounding triumph – but he has also frequently given song recitals...So, I had high expectations when I set to work with this disc.

The first thing I observed was the sensitive playing of Joseph Middleton, pliable and perceptive. Secondly I noted Carolyn Sampson’s girlish tone in Auch kleine Dinge, and her soft and inward reading. This was a recurrent feature throughout the programme.

When Allan Clayton made his entrance, he at once convinced me: here he displayed his armoury of nuances that had enthralled me on the Liszt disc, his beautiful pianissimo – listen to the end of Gesegnet sei (tr. 4) or the mastery half-voice in Der Mond hat eine schwere Klag’ erhoben – but on the reverse side of the coin his dramatic capacity was just as telling: Wenn du mich mit den Augen streifst und lachst (tr. 38) is just one instance. And Carolyn Sampson has the same sense for drama: so agitated and energetic in Wer rief dich denn? (tr. 6). Looking back on my notes, I see that the pad is littered with positive remarks and exclamation marks, but printing them here would surely be rather tiresome reading – and I rather leave it to those who buy the disc to find all the felicities these two well-endowed Liedersänger indulge in. The prestige word for all singing of Lieder is nuances, and from the above I believe that readers have understood that Carolyn Sampson and Allan Clayton are masterly in that respect.

How do they stand up against the competition from other recordings? Very well, I would say...Sampson and Clayton are certainly among the top contenders.

-- MusicWeb International