Groissböck and Martineau “Reply” to Schumann

Cover of the album being discussed

Many readers probably know that 1840 was Robert Schumann’s “year of song,” during which he composed four song cycles an a generous number of lieder. My guess is that the best known of the cycles is his Opus 42 Frauenliebe und Leben (a woman’s love and life), the setting of a cycle of poems by Adelbert von Chamisso. Recently, bass Günther Groissböck decided to “respond” to Schumann’s “call” by preparing an album entitled Männerliebe und Leben, drawing upon songs by four male composers to provide the perspective of “the other sex.” As of this writing, this album is currently available on Amazon.com only through an MP3 download Web page; but the good news is that the download also includes a PDF file of the accompanying booklet.

The selections are ordered in the chronological order of the composers’ birth dates. Schumann, represented by his Opus 48 Dichterliebe cycle, is preceded by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 98 cycle An die ferne Geliebte. The remaining two composers are Anton Bruckner and Johannes Brahms. The former is represented the three songs, while the Brahms selections account for five of his collections, with two songs from Opus 32.

I have to confess that, while he is represented by the fewest number of tracks, Bruckner was a major influence in drawing me to this album. Unless I am mistaken, this was my first encounter with any of Bruckner’s efforts in the art song genre. Even the 23-CD Collection anthology, released by Profil, seems to lack any evidence, although there is no shortage of sacred music. Thus, all three of the tracks, setting texts by August van Platen, Emanuel Geibel, and Matthias Jacob Schleiden (a biologist writing under the pseudonym “Ernst”) constituted a journey of discovery worth taking, no matter how modest it may have been.

All of the other selections on the album were familiar. To be fair my reactions to Beethoven’s Opus 98, informed by many years of listening, were mixed; but this has more to do with Beethoven than with the performers! The good news is that Groissböck knew how to work with pianist Malcolm Martineau’s keyboard work, which, of course, could probably evoke Beethoven’s rhetorical stances at the drop of a hat! Similarly, my encounters with Dichterliebe go back to my days in Los Angeles, where one of my colleagues at the Information Sciences Institute happened to be a baritone. Since my condo was a short distance from the lab, we would take a “lunch break,” once a week, at my place to work on this cycle. As might be guessed, our respective wives were the only ones to hear our performance of the work in its entirety!