Is it better with a band? (Recordings).(Schubert Lieder with Orchestra)(Sound Recording Review)

Anne Sofie von Otter, Thomas Quasthoff and Claudio Abbado collaborate on an illluminating program of orchestrated Schubert lieder.

Anne Sofie von Otter and Thomas Quasthoff

[]"SCHUBERT LIEDER WITH ORCHESTRA" Chamber Orchestra of Europe, C. Abbado. Texts and translations. Deutsche Grammophon 471 586-289

Chamber and orchestral adaptations of Schubert's lieder commenced soon after the composer's death and proliferated in the late-nineteenth century, when singers often appeared at orchestral "mixed program" concerts.

Deutsche Grammophon's stimulating new collection of orchestrated Schubert songs gives the cream of these anachronistic versions a fresh hearing; as with Cecilia Bartoli's landmark reexamination of nineteenth-century piano-accompanied arie antiche (If You Love Me, Decca/London 436 267-2), the disc should shake up received opinion; it certainly merits acquaintance, and it both invites and repays repeated hearings.

The performers here are of proven caliber. Both of Claudio Abbado's expert singers have offered Schubert songs with piano on earlier (and very fine) releases. Here and there, especially at loud dynamics over a full orchestra, the otherwise compelling Anne Sofie yon Otter seems to lose a bit of her wonted timbral luminosity. Though she shirks nothing, the testing "Gruppe aus dem Tartarus," for example, might better have been left to her more robust bass-baritone colleague. By comparison with the best efforts of Matthias Goerne or Simon Keenlyside, Thomas Quasthoff's spirited singing emerges a shade rough and uncharacteristically hollow in places; but in general he uses the edge of tension in his weightier instrument to shape dramatically effective phrases. The recording draws from live concerts in Paris's Cite de la Musique in May 2002, and while some passing vocal flaws might have been avoided in a studio session, the immediacy brings its own excitement.

Moreover, a tantalizing range of differing orchestrating styles is presented, and all of the adapters here (save for "Anonymous," to whom "An Silvia" is credited) were eminent composers in their own right. Franz Liszt, of course, did much to popularize Schubert's songs with his piano transcriptions, many of them elaborating on the melody far more ornately than does his straightforwardly effective version of "Die junge Nonne," aptly voiced with quiet intensity by von Otter. Anton Webern's skilled orchestrations (a sensitively set ...