Schubertreise XXXIV

Conor Biggs, bass
Michel Stas, piano

Liedesend, D 473 
Orpheus, als er in die Hölle ging, D 474 
Fahrt zum Hades, D 526 
Lied, D 788 
Epistel: Musikalischer Schwank, D 749 
Pilgerweise, D 789 
Abendstern, D 806 
Der Sieg, D 805 
Vergissmeinnicht, D 792

Liedesend relates how a bard, piqued by his failure to appease the king, destroys his harp. The king forgives him, pointing out how much pleasure his playing has given him, but the magic of the music fails to revive his cold heart as he approaches death. Schubert’s setting is a kind of homemade Ossian ballad with adventurous touches. 

Orpheus, als er in die Hölle ging is a splendid dramatic scena worthy of Mozart, and Schubert was evidently attracted by Orpheus’s faithfulness and courage in confronting the pains of hell. The text does not deal with the protagonist’s fatal error in looking back. 

Fahrt zum Hades continues the theme of hell. This neglected masterpiece, written for bass voice, employs two Schubertian motifs associated with doom: repeated quaver triplets in the right hand, a strong descending bass line in the left. Schubert transforms Mayrhofer’s habitual pessimism into a work of great pathos. 

Songs bearing the title Lied are a hard sell, and there are no less than seven in the Schubertian canon. This wonderful song, dealing with patience in adversity, with its attractive barber-shop harmonies and a style of writing reminiscent of the slow movement of the shorter piano sonata in A, deserves to be better known. 

The poet of Epistel: Musikalischer Schwank, Matthäus von Collin, remonstrates with his cousin Josef von Spaun for failing to write to his friends. (Von Spaun, a close friend of Schubert’s, had left Vienna to take up an administrative post in Linz. The English translation of the title, meaning ‘Epistle: a musical prank’ gives the game away. Schubert’s bravura tongue-in-cheek Italian setting, pure Rossinian pastiche, is a delight, and a real challenge for the singer. 

Pilgerweise is redolent of the gondola style, shuntering pleasantly on without plumbing great depths.  Abendstern is bitter-sweet homage to the evening star, which the poet Mayrhofer sees as a symbol of his own loneliness. Der Sieg, another Mayhrofer setting written for bass voice, expresses that longing for the world beyond, always just out of reach. It deserves to be much better known. Finally Vergissmeinnicht, another lengthy song about flowers (in twenty verses). There is plenty to interest the Schubertian here, although one is reminded of Capell’s witty remark that ‘A song must in fact be short’.

Presented by NCH