Cover of the recording being discussed (courtesy of Crossover Media)
In 1978 the Schubertiade Hohenems presented a performance of two rarely performed singspiel compositions by Franz Schubert. The earlier of these, the one-act D. 11, “Der Spiegelritter,” was composed when Schubert was only fourteen years old. The other selection was the more mature D. 326 two-act Die Freunde von Salamanka. The entire performance was recorded and released on a single Deutsche Grammophon (DG) album.
I just performed a search of “spiegelritter” on the DG Web site. The Results page consisted entirely of “Your search unfortunately yielded no results.” However, at the end of last month, the label created a Web page on Amazon.com for the album’s 25 tracks. Unfortunately, that is all that appears on that Web page. The fourteen-page booklet that included all of the texts in both German and English is not included for download. This is not particularly helpful for anyone interested in Schubert’s ventures into music for the stage.
Mind you, the music is pleasant enough; and the vocalists (including Hermann Prey and Edith Mathis) do their best to offer convincing performances. However, the album reminds me of the days when record collectors would hold listening parties. Frequently, they would produce a record, hide the album, and then say, “Guess what this is!” before setting down the needle. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall at one of those parties to find out who guessed what while listening to this particular album!
These days, I realize that I have put in a lot of effort in writing about Schubert whenever the occasion arises. This is one of those occasions, but I have to confess that this music is as unfamiliar today as it was when it was performed in 1978. I have to wonder whether DG decided to upload its tracks to Amazon because they could not think of anything else to do with them!
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