This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Max Reger. Those that have followed this site for some time probably known that almost all of the articles about Reger involved his compositions for organ. However, two pianists stand out, even if only briefly, Peter Serkin (accompanying Mischa Schneider in the Opus 116 cello sonata) and Igor Levit (for a solo piano reworking of Brahms’ Opus 121 set of four “serious” songs).
courtesy of Naxos of America
This past Friday, however, marked my “first contact” with vocal music. Capriccio released an album with three Reger settings of texts by Friedrich Hölderlin, Joseph von Eichendorff, and Christian Friedrich Hebbel, respectively. They are coupled with two familiar song cycles by Gustav Mahler, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (songs of a wayfarer) and the Rückert-Lieder collection of five settings of poems by Friedrich Rückert. The vocalists are mezzo Anke Vondung and baritone Tobias Berndt, performing with Das Neue Orchester conducted by Christoph Spering. Two of the Reger songs also include a chorus, performed on this album by Chorus Musicus Köln.
Nevertheless, the album, taken as a whole, runs the risk of dismissing the three Reger selections (each of which is over ten minutes in duration) as an amuse-bouche that prepares the listener for the more familiar Mahler selections. This strikes me as more than a little unfair. Nevertheless, my attitude may have been shaped by recognizing that it took two journeys through all the works that Reger composed for organ to adjust my listening practices to appreciate his repertoire. From that point of view, in the context of all the entries in the Reger catalog, less than an hour of solo vocal and choral compositions does little to orient the listener to those genres.
Does that larger catalog encourage us to dig deeper? As they say, “You don’t know until you have tried.” For the listener that really wants to approach Reger attentively, a larger serving of both of those “courses” is definitely in order.
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