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07/29/2024
Franz Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin, D.795
Julian Prégardien (tenor), Kristian Bezuidenhout (fortepiano)
Recording: SWR Funkstudio, Stuttgart, Germany (November 2023) – 61’05
harmonia mundi HMM902739 (Distributed by [Integral]) – Booklet in French, English and German
It’s tempting to assume there can be nothing new under the sun regarding performances of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin. The cycle of 20 songs for voice and piano, about the love of a wandering swain for the miller’s lovely daughter, has been a staple for vocalists and their accompanists for some 200 years. Is it possible to offer a fresh approach to one of the best-known song cycles in the German Lied repertoire without sacrificing satisfying conventions or indulging in borderline tasteless extremes?
My skepticism was short lived thanks to a new recording of this work on harmonia mundi. Julian Prégardien, tenor, and Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano, provide a revelatory exploration of the closely interwoven songs that sprang from the mind of Schubert a few years before his untimely death. Though tinged with shadows of unrequited affection, the cycle is one of Schubert’s final grand expressions of delight in the exuberance of Nature (starry skies, cheerful brook, dancing wildflowers) and uninhibited young love.
This recording is no mere repetition of what earlier musicians have inferred from Schubert’s notation. There is a startling originality as the artists not only seek to deliver the composer’s intentions, but also assert their own voices, including a measure of ornamentation which brightens and deepens the expressive impact.
The 68-page booklet which accompanies this recording is more than a textual tool and is almost a third partner in the performance. Within, we learn not just the background details involved in the production but gain intimate insights into what may have contributed to this superb performance. For example, we learn that Prégardien’s father, Christoph, an illustrious Lieder tenor in his own right, used to sing these songs around the house, creating a positive musical environment in which his son could grow. Perhaps this is why the younger Prégardien can make the astonishing comment that hardly a day passes in which he has not thought in some way about this music. Such immersive synchronicity with the cycle could only be explained by an acquaintance with the music and the poetry at a very high, almost unnatural level.
Prégardien’s extraordinary articulation never lags, rising in the well‑known first song, “Das Wandern” (“Wandering”), through the ebb and flow of courtship, to the barely audible final lament, “Des Baches Wiegenlied” (“The Brook’s lullaby”). Intertwined with these melodic strands is the clearly defined voice of Bezuidenhout’s performance on the fortepiano. The booklet tells us that this is a 2019 copy made by Christoph Kern after a Conrad Graf instrument from Schubert’s time. Add to the sad history of Schubert’s life the fact that he never owned a piano of any type, Graf or otherwise. Nonetheless, this particular instrument is a model of lucidity and precision. Bezuidenhout’s playing reveals true artistry. I, who do not always care for the sound of early pianos, found the instrument’s character and the pianist’s interpretation indivisible and enlightening.
Providing an undergirding to this performance is the extraordinary poetry of Wilhelm Müller. These poems stand on their own merits and yet connect with each other as they reveal the shifting tides of romantic love. Schubert’s was not the first setting of these poems. Fanny Mendelssohn and her future husband, Wilhelm Hensel, performed a version for friends by composer Ludwig Berger in 1816. By a fascinating coincidence, Müller’s short life (1794‑1827) closely paralleled Schubert’s (1797‑1828) in an era in which many artists died young of then‑incurable diseases. Although the cycle winds down from ecstasy and ends with whispered grief, some of Schubert’s happiest celebrations of Nature occur in this work. The composer also set Müller’s other poetry cycle, Die Winterreise (The Winter’s Journey) to memorable music. Despite the near‑perfect matching of words to song, the poet and the composer—one German, one Austrian—did not meet or collaborate, and it is unlikely that Müller (a prominent academic) ever heard the setting that would bring immortality to his work.
Every aspect of each poem is treated with utmost feeling and regard, with the flexibility of Prégardien’s voice allowing the sound to be as weightless and transparent as breathing. Some of the final phrases in the song, “Pause”, for example, have a radiance that matches what I rank among the sweetest singing I have ever heard.
This may not be a Müllerin for all Schubert aficionados, but for me, it sets a high standard not soon to be surpassed.
Linda Holt
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