The concert that brought together Peter Schreier, the leading Mozart tenor of the 1970s from Dresden, and Erik Werba, the Vienna-born doyen of lied accompanists...

The concert that brought together Peter Schreier, the leading Mozart tenor of the 1970s from Dresden, and Erik Werba, the Vienna-born doyen of lied accompanists on 25 January 1978 featured 17 songs, the cantata with piano accompaniment “Die ihr des unermesslichen Weltalls Schöpfer ehrt” K619 from the final year of Mozart’s life, as well as two encore pieces. Schreier and Werba obviously intended to present Mozart’s entire lied repertoire, except for those songs whose texts were too obviously written from the perspective of a female protagonist. From today’s perspective the interpretation of the Mozart songs in this recital is remarkably homogeneous. For Peter Schreier, the opera singer, Mozart was the first true romantic composer. The songs are presented in a deeply emotional, but never sentimental manner. The chosen tempos are therefore rather on the slow side of the spectrum and here as well as in the ballad-like song “Das Veilchen” K476, Schreier makes it apparent how he reads Mozart’s mature, through-composed songs as text based and text centered, as if they were foreshadowing Schubert, Schumann and Brahms.