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Schubert: The Fair Maid of the Mill / Glynn, Spence
Signum Classics

Schubert: The Fair Maid of the Mill / Glynn, Spence

$9.99
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Details

Composer
Franz Schubert
Artist
Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
Format
CD
Label
Signum Classics
Released
May 20, 2022
Catalog #
SIGCD711
UPC
635212071120

About

Christopher Glynn continues his series of Schubert in English releases with a new recording of ‘The Fair Maid of the Mill’ (Die schöne Müllerin) with acclaimed Scottish tenor Nicky Spence. Set to a new translation by writer and director Jeremy Sams, Willhelm Müller’s direct and emotionally-charged poetry became the basis of Schubert’s first cycle to tell a complete story over the course of its 20 songs. Nicky Spence is one of Scotland’s proudest sons and his unique skills as a singing actor and the rare honesty of his musicianship have earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession. Nicky won a record contract with Decca records while still studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and then took a place as an inaugural Harewood Artist at the ENO. Christopher Glynn is a Grammy award-winning pianist, praised for his ‘breathtaking sensitivity’ (Gramophone), ‘irrepressible energy, wit and finesse’ (The Guardian) and ‘perfect fusion of voice and piano’ (BBC Music Magazine). He is also Artistic Director of the Ryedale Festival, where he has been praised as a ‘visionary’ and ‘inspired programmer’ (The Times).

REVIEWS

"The Fair Maid of the Mill [is] extraordinary: For the first time, as a native English speaker, I found myself understanding this song cycle on a more intimate and revelatory level...The meticulousness of word-for-word accuracy is traded for emotional accuracy. Playwright and director Jeremy Sams was commissioned to write this new translation, and his background in both opera and musical theater lends itself well to finding the right words to convey poetic, emotional, and dramatic honesty.

Tenor Nicky Spence’s own sense of crossover theatricality heightens the immediacy and intimacy of the cycle and Sams’s new texts with a verdant tenor that blooms and contracts in emotional fits and starts. (These beats are both offset and at times juxtaposed by pianist Christopher Glynn...) As the journeyman’s dream begins to collapse on itself...Spence spits out his pleas in a fit of jealousy and panic. The clarity with which he delivers the words makes it easy to slip into the language of Schubert’s work and tap into the small details that render the story so devastating at the end—try listening to him sing of how his love 'loves hunting green' without your throat catching a bit. It’s these small details that make this English Müllerin so rich and compulsively listenable.

--Van Magazine (Olivia Giovetti)

This is the third in the Signum label’s sequence of Schubert song cycles using an English version of the texts by Jeremy Sams. His is in no sense a literal translation and is never in the least archly “poetic”, but is instead couched in relatively, plain, direct English which captures the spirit and directness of the original German while jettisoning any faux-Romantic or medieval archaisms such as “fain would I”. The translation is vernacular and quotidian but not modish or vulgar – and Sams does a fine job of reproducing the rhyming, strophic form of some songs, finding workable rhymes which do not sound forced, so in “Mine” we hear “sound, round, resound” and “found”, and “shine, wine, intertwine, combine” and “mine” sequentially to reproduce the effect of the German. The freedom of the English into which some songs are rendered might initially take the listener aback but a moment’s reflection will confirm the aptness and fidelity of Sams’ rendering; hence, the opening song begins “A miller loves to sit and dream of somewhere” rather than “To wander is the miller’s delight, to wander” or some such precious transliteration – and I know which I prefer. Sometimes the translation is both felicitous and amusing, as when in “Impatience” (Ungeduld) Sams picks up on the German: “ich möcht es sän auf jedes frische Beet/ Mit Kressensamen” (I’d like to sow it in every fresh bed with cress seeds) and translates that colloquially as “I want to sow the words in watercress” so that it rhymes with “happiness” in the next line, and in “The Hunter” the miller girl’s cabbage patch (Kohlgarten) is transformed into a “strawberry bed” so that “fruit” rhymes conveniently with “shoot”. Certain lines impress themselves immediately upon the mind of the listener by their memorability, such as the alliterative “The sound of rushing water has mesmerised my mind” in the second song.

Nicky Spence’s diction is so pellucid as to render the provision of the English texts almost superfluous but such thoughtfulness on the part of the label remains a welcome gesture. [Spence's] beautiful, flexible, easily-produced sound...never falters; his tone encompasses both sweetness and power as required and his knack of placing just the right emphasis or applying a momentary pause in the words without unduly disrupting the vocal line is apparent throughout. I particularly like the way he can introduce a desperate sighing note into his timbre without it turning mawkish. Christopher Glynn supports him with some of the most subtle and sensitive pianism I have even heard applied to this work; his playing is by turns as fluid, sparkling and turbulent as rushing water. He and Spence make an ideally matched partnership – fresh and immediate, presenting it in a manner which could easily win new adherents to this miraculous song cycle but, in Glynn’s words, is also capable of 'offering a new perspective to those who know it well.'

--MusicWeb International (Ralph Moore)

Tracklist 20 tracks

  1. 1 No. 1. Somewhere 02:34
    Track
    1
    Title
    No. 1. Somewhere
    Duration
    02:34
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  2. 2 No. 2. Where now? 02:24
    Track
    2
    Title
    No. 2. Where now?
    Duration
    02:24
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  3. 3 No. 3. Stop! 01:30
    Track
    3
    Title
    No. 3. Stop!
    Duration
    01:30
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  4. 4 No. 4. A thank you to the stream 02:15
    Track
    4
    Title
    No. 4. A thank you to the stream
    Duration
    02:15
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  5. 5 No. 5. The end of a long day's work 02:35
    Track
    5
    Title
    No. 5. The end of a long day's work
    Duration
    02:35
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  6. 6 No. 6. Curiosity 04:01
    Track
    6
    Title
    No. 6. Curiosity
    Duration
    04:01
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  7. 7 No. 7. Impatience 02:38
    Track
    7
    Title
    No. 7. Impatience
    Duration
    02:38
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  8. 8 No. 8. Good morning 04:19
    Track
    8
    Title
    No. 8. Good morning
    Duration
    04:19
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  9. 9 No. 9. The miller's flowers 03:27
    Track
    9
    Title
    No. 9. The miller's flowers
    Duration
    03:27
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  10. 10 No. 10. Tears like rain 04:07
    Track
    10
    Title
    No. 10. Tears like rain
    Duration
    04:07
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  11. 11 No. 11. Mine! 02:23
    Track
    11
    Title
    No. 11. Mine!
    Duration
    02:23
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  12. 12 No. 12. Interlude 04:54
    Track
    12
    Title
    No. 12. Interlude
    Duration
    04:54
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  13. 13 No. 13. The green ribbon 01:51
    Track
    13
    Title
    No. 13. The green ribbon
    Duration
    01:51
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  14. 14 No. 14. The huntsman 01:17
    Track
    14
    Title
    No. 14. The huntsman
    Duration
    01:17
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  15. 15 No. 15. Jealousy and pride 01:38
    Track
    15
    Title
    No. 15. Jealousy and pride
    Duration
    01:38
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  16. 16 No. 16. Her favourite colour 04:12
    Track
    16
    Title
    No. 16. Her favourite colour
    Duration
    04:12
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  17. 17 No. 17. The hated colour 02:13
    Track
    17
    Title
    No. 17. The hated colour
    Duration
    02:13
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  18. 18 No. 18. Withered flowers 03:50
    Track
    18
    Title
    No. 18. Withered flowers
    Duration
    03:50
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  19. 19 No. 19. The miller and the brook 04:11
    Track
    19
    Title
    No. 19. The miller and the brook
    Duration
    04:11
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn
  20. 20 No. 20. The brook sings a lullaby 06:54
    Track
    20
    Title
    No. 20. The brook sings a lullaby
    Duration
    06:54
    Composer
    Franz Schubert
    Performer
    Nicky Spence, Christopher Glynn