R Schumann

Songs of Love and Death:

Zwölf Gedichte von Justinus Kerner; Funf Lieder, Op. 40; Dichterliebe

Simon Wallfisch (baritone),

Edward Rushton (piano)

Resonus RES10247 70:57 mins

With Christian Gerhaher in the process of bringing out the complete Schumann songs (due for completion next year), brave is the baritone who dares to release a new recording of that most iconic of cycles: Dichterliebe. And especially since Simon Wallfisch pairs it with the 12 Kerner Lieder, such a stand-out on Gerhaher’s first instalment.

For good measure he also adds the rather less well-known Five Songs Op. 40, four of them plumbing ever darkening depths as envisioned by Hans Christian Andersen; the fifth a mongrel, tapping Greek folk poetry via French then German re-purposing. Like the Kerner songs they constitute a ‘sequence’ rather than a cycle, though Schumann’s instinctive impulse towards creating a cohesive ‘bigger picture’ prevails.

Comparing Wallfisch and Gerhaher in the first of the Kerner songs is instructive. Wallfisch and pianist Edward Rushton paint the storm with a broad brush that can sound a touch congested, whereas Gerhaher’s razor-sharp consonants engineer a pent-up smouldering vitality. And if the ecclesiastical foreground of ‘Stirb’, Lieb’ und Freud’ is exquisitely established, its poignant backstory is less tellingly inhabited. That said the two final songs radiate a powerful and probing inner poise.

Dichterliebe, of course, is an oft-recorded Everest, and they grasp how each song fits into the mosaic of the cycle’s poetic journey (just occasionally eliding numbers too enthusiastically in their zeal to underscore the narrative thrust). Wallfisch’s vibrato can become intrusive, and ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’s aura of wonderment proves elusive; but the dream sequences are enrapt and otherworldly, while ‘Die Rose, die Lillie’ chuckles with winsome glee. Paul Riley

PERFORMANCE ★★★

RECORDING ★★★