Franz Schubert Schwanengesang

Schubert’s enigmatic final collection of songs, Schwanengesang, is the subject of baritone Andrè Schuen and his longstanding accompanist Daniel Heide’s second release for DG. Baritone Andrè Schuen calls Schwanengesang “my greatest love among the Schubert lieder. Especially the Heine settings; they move me the most!” His admiration for the cycle dates back to a time before he had even become a professional singer: “It’s one of the first lied compositions I got to know. I remember a recording with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau that I played over and over again.”

This collection of songs published in the year following Schubert’s death in 1828 is not a true cycle, nor were these pieces intended as a set by the composer. Even the title, which refers to the Romantic notion of a swan’s ability to sing one enchanting song only at its death, was assigned posthumously by the collection’s publisher. Nevertheless, all but one of these 14 deeply emotional songs (in the best Romantic tradition of desperation, lost love, longing, and wistful, painful remembrance) are set to the poems of two writers, Ludwig Rellstab and Heinrich Heine.

The darkly lit cover photo may convey some of the desolation of Franz Schubert's Schwanengesang, but to appreciate the full range of emotions of this posthumous song cycle – which shift from the hopeful passion of Liebesbotschaft and the giddiness of Frühlingssehnsucht to the heartbreak of Ihr Bild and the horror of Der Doppelgänger – listen to this exceptional Harmonia Mundi release by tenor Mark Padmore and his accompanist, pianist Paul Lewis.

SCHUBERT: SONGS WITHOUT WORDS is an elegant recital by pianist Daria Hovora and cellist Mischa Maisky that allows us to hear Schubert songs, beautifully rich as they are with the texts as sung by many of our finest singers, here solely for the instrumental line. Somehow the interplay between melody and accompaniment (always an equal partnership in Schubert's hands) is heightened by this experience. Not that the entire album is appropriated by the cello standing in for a vocalist: the opening work is "Sonata for Arpeggione and Klavier" and is one of the highlights of the CD. But just listen to the performances of 'Standchen', 'An die Musik' and 'Du bist die Ruhe' and hear the extraordinary marriage between the piano and cello, singing as beautifully as any other version. This is one of those CDs that bears keeping out for multiple listenings in the late evening.

The sixth volume in Matthias Goerne's survey of Franz Schubert's lieder includes the posthumous collection Schwanengesang, which contains some of the loveliest and most disturbing songs Schubert ever composed. One problem in performing this ambiguous work of Schubert's last year lies in its alternation of sweet, lyrical songs with those of a much darker and even frightening character, and it's left to the singer and the pianist to balance the moods and to make the contrasts of expression as subtle as possible. Goerne and his accompanist Christoph Eschenbach meet the challenge by carefully shading the songs with a tempering of expressions that admits sorrow in the midst of joy and hope in the depths of despair.

The cosmopolitan Franz Liszt and the unpretentious Franz Schubert couldn't have been more unlike in terms of lives that they led. But with their musical oeuvre, they maintain a symbiotic relationship to this day: Schubert's works were always an inspiring, 'magnificent treasure' to Liszt, which he was very fond of sharing with the world. Therefore Liszt was an advocate of Schubert's reception wherever possible. On concert tours, he also always had Schubert's music with him, including many lieder as piano transcriptions. Viacheslav Apostel-Pankratowsky traces the synergies of this artistic alliance on his debut CD with GENUIN: with exceptional reserve, energetic musical language, and warm nuance.

Two masterful Schubert interpreters, tenor Mark Padmore & pianist Mitsuko Uchida record Schubert’s Schwanengesang and Beethoven’s An Die Ferne Geliebte for the first time. On a new Decca Classics album, Uchida and Padmore appear on record for the first time in this live recording from London’s Wigmore Hall. They perform Schubert’s Schwanengesang (his “Swansong”, first published weeks after the composer’s premature death in 1828) and Beethoven’s only major song cycle An die ferne Geliebte. With a lifetime of experience with this music, Uchida and Padmore are the perfect duo to interpret this magnificent repertoire.

Renowned Schubert interpreter Ian Bostridge revisits Winterreise, the greatest of all song cycles, on his first PENTATONE album. Bostridge presents this masterpiece together with pianist, conductor and composer Thomas Adès, who bases his profound accompaniment on a fresh engagement with the original manuscripts. Winterreise is the epitome of Romantic melancholia, written by a composer aware of his fatal illness but at the height of his creative powers. It is the first installment of a trilogy of PENTATONE recordings comprising the major Schubert song cycles. After Winterreise, Die schöne Müllerin and Schwanengesang will follow. Ian Bostridge is one of the most celebrated tenors and lied interpreters of his generation. Thomas Adès is best known as a composer but demonstrates his extraordinary skills as a song accompanist on his first PENTATONE recording.

Ms Hendricks has allied herself with one of the truly great pianists of the last thirty years, and a masterly Schubertian at that: Radu Lupu. His Schubert impromptus on Decca are to my mind only challenged by Brendel. I can’t remember hearing him as accompanist anywhere else, which makes his partnership with Barbara Hendricks special indeed. He doesn’t dominate the proceedings as some other soloists have tended to do but neither is he too reticent. It seems that they have found a good balance. Once or twice I reacted to his approach. Der Wanderer an den Mond seems too jolting but otherwise there are no eccentricities.

Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside complete their survey of Schubert's song cycles with this recording of Winterreise. Composed in the late 1820s, towards the end of Schubert's tragically short life, Winterreise (Winter Journey) is a setting of twenty-four poems by Wilhelm Müller and describes a traveller leaving the town which was the home of the object of his unrequited love, to embark on a long journey, through a chill, wintry landscape, which ends in near-suicidal despair. This recording represents the culmination of a project that started back in 2015, when Williams accepted the challenge to prepare and perform all three song cycles in one season at the Wigmore Hall in London.