Naxos Concludes Schumann Lieder Project

courtesy of Naxos of America

According to the Presto Music Web page, the eleventh and final volume in the Naxos project to record and release all of the songs of Robert Schumann is due for release one week from today; and orders are currently being taken for both the CD and three formats of digital downloads, all of which include the accompanying booklet. Amazon.com seems to be unaware of release information, declaring the CD to be “Currently unavailable” and saying nothing in its “Digital Music” category. Given that Amazon generally processes pre-orders, I suspect that this is yet another case in which Presto is better informed from their vantage point in the United Kingdom.

Naxos’ tenth volume was released in March of last year. Ironically, the following August Sony Classical released an eleven-CD box set accounting for all of Schumann’s songs in a single package. My guess is that the listeners that had already amassed the first ten Naxos volumes would have preferred waiting for the final volume to acquiring the Sony release. On the other hand I came away with the impression that Sony paid more attention to chronology than Naxos did, meaning that, as a listener, I shall probably allocate much of my own time to the Sony version.

To some extent the Naxos release amounts to an effort to tie up loose ends. Once again, the pianist is Ulrich Eisenlohr; and he works with only two vocalists, soprano Caroline Melzer and tenor Simon Bode. Nevertheless, for those interested in thoroughness, the final Naxos album concludes with five appendix (Anhang) selections, five songs that seem to be part of an unpublished collection of eleven Jugendlieder. These may be the appendix entries that Christian Gerhaher chose to omit in the recordings he made for Sony, but his booklet notes suggest that there were only eight of those songs. Sadly, the Naxos booklet says nothing about this appendix; but they do not appear to be the compositions that Gerhaher had dismissed as being “in parts, fragmentary.”

Taken as a whole, I have to confess that I am happy to have both collections. I am glad that the Naxos producers chose to venture beyond the “published canon” of collections with opus numbers. How much those ventures add to the listening experience can only be decided by the individual listener. Hopefully, those pre-ordering through the Presto Music Web page will not find themselves waiting unduly long.