courtesy of Jensen Artists
Sony Classical recently concluded a major recording project organized by baritone Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber. The result is an eleven-CD collection of the 299 songs composed by Robert Schumann. Some readers may recognize the names of these two performers, since they presented two recitals for San Francisco Performances, the first in December of 2016 and the second in October of 2019. However, both of those programs were devoted entirely to the vocal works of Gustav Mahler; so this collection provided my “first contact” with Gerhaher’s approaches to Schumann.
It is important to note that the collection includes more than solo baritone compositions. Over the course of his writing, Schumann explored different combinations of voices in different arrangements; and his Opus 42 Frauenliebe und Leben (a women’s love and life) was composed for female voice. As a result, nine other vocalists contribute to a generous number of tracks in this collection. They are sopranos Sibylla Rubens, Camilla Tilling, Julia Kleiter, Christina Landshamer, and Anett Fritsch, mezzos Wiebke Lehmkuhl and Stefanie Irányi, tenor Martin Mitterrutzner, baritone Andreas Burkhart. In addition, James Cheung joins Huber when two pianos are required.
The entire collection is divided roughly chronologically into two parts. The first part consists of the songs composed in 1840, known as Schumann’s Liederjahr (year of song). This was a major shift for the composer, since he had been writing almost entirely for the piano between 1832 and 1839. This period is covered by the first six CDs in the collection. The songs on the remaining five CDs were composed between 1849 and 1852. The booklet refers to this songs as the second Liederjahr collection, even if the period of their composition was significantly longer. For those interested in comparing the relative sizes of Schumann’s compositions for piano with his vocal works, my Brilliant Classics collection of his complete piano works is covered by thirteen CDs, not that much larger than the vocal category!
I should make it clear that the minor misnomer of the second Liederjahr is really my only quibble with the booklet. Over 200 pages in length, it provides not only the texts for all of the songs along with English translations but also one index of the titles and first lines and another of the authors of the texts. When one is dealing with 299 songs, it is good to know that searching for any specific song is relatively readily facilitated!
It goes without saying that I am familiar with only a small percentage of the content of these eleven CDs. Mind you, that is not flat-out ignorance, since some readers may recall that I have been following a Naxos project to record the same collection. I wrote about the tenth volume in that project this past March. However, the first volume was released back in 2005, before I began to write seriously about the performance of music and was able to draw upon Naxos releases through the now-defunct Classics Online service. Presumably one more volume is on the way; but, under current working conditions, I am not about to hold my breath.
The fact is that listening to the results of the Gerhaher-Huber project with Sony has been a highly satisfying journey of discovery. I know full well that I shall never commit the entire collection to memory. However, on the basis of my previous encounters with both baritone and pianist, I trust their ability to guide me through that journey. I am sure I shall revisit many of the CDs in this collection; and, as might be guessed, I expect to draw heavily upon the indexing resources provided by the accompanying booklet.
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