Stone Records’ Hugo Wolf Project Nears Completion

courtesy of Naxos of America

According to my archival records, the last time I wrote about Stone Records’ project to record all of the songs of Hugo Wolf was in December of 2014. I was still writing for Examiner.com at the time; and my most recent article about this project discussed the eighth volume, a single CD release that included Wolf’s 1889 Eichendorff-Lieder collection. Amazon.com states that the ninth volume was released at the very beginning of 2017; but apparently notification of that release seems to have slipped through the cracks. (Since I remember consulting Amazon is see if I had fallen behind on my project, information may previously have slipped through the cracks at Amazon, too!)

Fortunately, I was notified about the tenth volume at the beginning of this year; and, even more fortunately, I was able to find the ninth volume in the Naxos B2B database that people like me use for reviewing many of the newly released recordings. Ironically, Amazon appears to be unaware of this recording (suggesting that I was not the one in error when I last failed to find the ninth volume). On the other hand, those willing to bear the slings and arrows of currency conversion will be able to find the tenth volume at Amazon.co.uk. The title of this tenth volume is Goethe Lieder: Part 1; and, according to a source I have found to be reliable, the final release in the series will be the Part 2 album.

Whether or not one finds this entire eleven-CD collection to be a journey worth taking will depend on what thinks of Wolf. I have no trouble admitting that he fascinates me. I seem him as the most significant composer of art song to stand between Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. (Yes, that interval of time is narrow enough that any competition would be limited!) Wolf’s biography is turbulent and depressing, and his ferocious intensity probably contributed to the intriguing sharp edges one encounters when listening to so much of his repertoire.

In terms of my most recent listening experiences, I have to say that the ninth volume was particularly satisfying. This is because it combines an assortment of Wolf’s earliest efforts with his last collection, the 1897 Michelangelo Lieder, which consists of only three songs. These songs have German texts, translated from the Italian by Walter Heinrich Robert-Tornow. On the other hand many of the settings of poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are more familiar, due to both recitals and other recordings. However, I have to confess that, thanks to the resources available to Stone, the final track on this album, “Epiphanias,” has four singers, alternating across the different verses; and, for me at least, this resulted in greater rhetorical appeal than I had encountered in past solo performances.