BaL 2.06.12 - Wolf's Spanish Songbook

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

0930 Building a Library: Hilary Finch discusses her personal recommendations of Wolf's Spanish Songbook

Available versions:

Various selections by

Lyne Fortin (soprano) & Esther Gonthier (piano)
Measha Brueggergosman (soprano) & Justus Zeyen (piano)
Elisabeth Grümmer & Hugo Diez (piano)
Lisa Della Casa (soprano)
Bo Skovhus (baritone),WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln, Stefan Blunier (orch. Stravinsky)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (soprano) & Jacqueline Bonneau (piano)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (soprano) & Gerald Moore (piano)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (soprano), Geoffrey Parson (piano)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (soprano)
Christoph Prégardien (tenor) & Michael Gees (piano)
Hilde Konetzni (soprano) & Josef Krips (piano)
Susanne Bernhard (soprano), & Harald Feller (organ)
Christa Ludwig (mezzo-soprano) & Charles Spencer (piano)
Christiane Oelze (soprano), Rudolf Jansen (piano)
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (mezzo) & Joseph Kaiser (tenor)
Hannelore Kuhse (soprano), Helmut Oertel (piano)
Lotte Lehmann
Elisabeth Söderström (soprano)
Phillip Langshaw (baritone)
Janet Baker (mezzo)
Mitsuko Shirai (Mezzo-soprano), Joseph Protschka (tenor), Hartmut Höll (piano)
Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, David Shallon
Gerda Hartman (soprano), John Whitelaw (piano)
Walter Berry, Rudolf Buchbinder
Christa Ludwig, Erik Werba
Irmgard Seefried, Erik Werba
Russell Oberlin (countertenor) DVD
Elena Nikolaidi (mezzo), Guy Bourassa (piano)
Zara Dolukhanova (mezzo)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau & Gerald Moore

[gurnemanz]

My first reaction to that list is to ask myself exactly how this survey will be conducted since they are all, as you point out, selections from the 44 songs - 24 for the female voice and 20 for the male. I assume they will arrive at a recommendation for a selection disc (one male, one female?) and a complete recording, of which there are to my knowledge not very many currently available (possibly only one). This is the only one which I have as a complete set - with Anne Sofie von Otter/Olaf Bär + Geoffrey Parsons - which is a classic and I have in two forms: the EMI twofer, now seemingly only available as a download, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wolf-Spanisc.../dp/B001I4IHDY. It's not on your list, but you can still get it in the excellent anniversary box which most Wolf lovers will certainly already have: http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/EMI/6886082

It is very disappointing that the other obvious complete recommendation with the late-lamented Fischer-Dieskau + Schwarzkopf and Gerald Moore is apparently now out of print: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wolf-Spanish...7938160&sr=8-1 although many of the individual songs are available spread over separate selection discs.

PS I am deeply impressed that you were awake and alert at 6.20 a.m. to take the trouble to post this list.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

PS I am deeply impressed that you were awake and alert at 6.20 a.m. to take the trouble to post this list.

I go to bed on Thursday night, wondering what BaL work will be announced on Friday morning on the BBC website. I then dream about it. Sometimes the dream comes true. But at other times, we end up with an indistinct topic, or a composer's complete works.
But this was quite different - a work of which there are hardly any complete recordings.

[verismissimo]

For me this is one of the very greatest of song cycles. The ten sacred songs that open it are profoundly moving. The remainder, all secular, are far distant from typical German Romanticism in their use of irony, even slyness, on the subject of love.

I've been listening today to Schwarzkopf/DFD/Moore and can't imagine anything could be finer.

Over the weekend I'll go on to von Otter/Bar/Parsons, so who knows...

Then I'll go back to Gerhardt, Trianti, Husch, Rethberg etc in the Wolf Society box from the 1930s.

[Brassbandmaestro]

Is there much point of Radio 3 to do a BaL of incomplete recordings?

[verismissimo]

It seems that Wolf has few followers on these boards - and ditto among the wider music-loving community.

It wasn't always so.

In fact, the reputations of Wolf and Mahler (born the same year, they shared a room as students in Vienna) have reversed over the past half century or so.

If I had to choose between them, I'd have Wolf.

Am I alone?

[Beef Oven]

It seems that Wolf has few followers on these boards - and ditto among the wider music-loving community.

It wasn't always so.

In fact, the reputations of Wolf and Mahler (born the same year, they shared a room as students in Vienna) have reversed over the past half century or so.

If I had to choose between them, I'd have Wolf.

Am I alone?

yes

[amateur51]

Is there much point of Radio 3 to do a BaL of incomplete recordings?

Well if they're all that is available at present, I guess that it has to be so.

I know very little of this work and I look forward to a BaL tutorial from Hilary Finch to inspire and inform me.

[gurnemanz]

I have been hooked on Wolf ever since I borrowed a double LP of F-D and Moore doing Goethe settings from the library about 40 years ago. He's so inventive and witty - the piano is always doing something interesting. I snapped up the spell-binding Wolf Society Walter Legge inspired recordings from the 30s on LP then CD which include Helge Rosvaenge's extraordinary Feuerreiter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8b8rpdgZ0s
Moore recounts in his memoirs how he found Rosvaenge's first take a bit tame and gave him some whisky to loosen him up.

[gurnemanz]

It seems that Wolf has few followers on these boards - and ditto among the wider music-loving community.

It wasn't always so.

In fact, the reputations of Wolf and Mahler (born the same year, they shared a room as students in Vienna) have reversed over the past half century or so.

If I had to choose between them, I'd have Wolf.

Am I alone?

I've never confronted myself with that choice but in respect of song-writing I might well follow your preference for the sheer variety of Wolf's output.

This must be the lowest response level to any BAL thread - 9 so far and the programme is tomorrow. (As a barmy Wolf fan, I am just doing my bit by boosting him into double figures and keeping him near the top.)

It will be surprising if the recently deceased Fischer-Dieskau doesn't get a recommendation.