Above: As included in this recording’s programme notes, the above sketch by painter Moritz Ludwig von Schwind depicts a Schubertiade. Beside Schubert is pictured the renowned declamatory style singer and Schubert interpreter, Johann Michael Vogl. Written accounts of the time, as referred to in the programme notes, labelled Vogl as “our master of declamatory song”.
The thrill of attending a live concert from a group or individual musician practising Historically Informed Performance comes when we hear a loved work now with a strikingly different sheen than we usually hear. Extensive research and trial of performance practice elements have preceded the live event. This background checking and cross-referencing can greatly change a loved work as we know it.
Whether it be the timbre of gut strings or the employment of expressive devices and performance practice by a soloist, orchestra or accompanist, or something else, the sound world of the researched composer and scores featured in the live concert will never be the same for us.
A new ‘HIP’ recording on the other hand effects us and lingers with us for so much longer than a live performance. On reading the booklet notes to the CD (or streamed album) we can admire and delve into the research work of the performers, and take instruction on expressive techniques employed by the HIP researcher-musicians.
Re-listening is possible on a recording, and individual songs or movements which strike us with their new sheen, shape or feel can be focussed on or re-listened to out of order for us to become accustomed to the bold new style of playing or singing.
As far as lieder and vocal music with piano accompaniment goes, the new recording – Schubert Schwanegesang on the Deux-Elles label is a significant offering on the Australian and global Historically Informed Performance recording scene. It is bold, thoroughly researched by the performers, and various methods of delving into the time or world of Schubert’s ‘Schubertiades’ have been used in order to discover and emulate what his songs would have sounded like when delivered by performers of the day.
This recording focusses on the expressive emphasis of the vocalists and pianists of Schubert’s time. Scores of Schubert’s contemporaries keen on creating dramatic impact through flexible and dramatic delivery of poetic text and of those following on or creating in the shadow of Schubert’s legacy have been studied by soprano Anna Fraser and pianist-academic Neal Peres Da Costa.
Writings and artwork describing performances plus performers in the declamatory/ dramatic style where the text guides the performance accent have been studied. So too have recordings of Schubert songs and keyboard transcriptions of them decades after his time been closely studied- to absorb and reproduce the ongoing tradition of a declamatory approach to performing song.
This perhaps alarming new flexibility is where the voice manipulates sound using physical, emotional and musical tools to greater serve the text and poetic storytelling or emotion.
Above: Pianist Neal Peres Da Costa. Photo: Robert Catto
The choice of Schubert’s posthumously published work Schwanengesang D.975, his final setting of poetry to song to illustrate this style is a vivid and appropriate one. These songs are full of anguish. The poems gathered together are dripping with a range of emotions dealing with depth of love, love lost, yearning, memory and despair. With finely crafted accompaniments to match.
These gems of the lieder style are fine fodder for the HIP musicians to apply declamatory performance techniques and performance tools of the day. In doing so they renovate our concept of what we believe Schubert’s songs should be and indeed were delivered by vocalists and pianists of his time and afterward.
Our modern interpretation or musical aesthetic beliefs and listening experience lead us to expect Schubert songs to have a comparatively neat, soaring, ordered, smooth flow on performance, despite the savage, shifting emotions in the text. Those expectations are given a real shake up in this important new release.
Here the changed sheen to Schwanengesang, the new sound world and approach are justified with consistent delivery across all tracks. Also there are highly informative and detailed album booklet notes with impressive, accessible discussion regarding this ground-breaking HIP project to accompany the music.
The initial effect on the listener is maybe one of shock, but the persistence, control and commitment of these performers endears the difference to us.
Interspersed between the Schubert tracks are three songs from Johann Anton André, a contemporary of Schubert, who left detailed expressive markings on song scores to urge the singer (and accompanist) to vary volume, tempi, vocal shape, timbre and accentuation, seemingly in an erratic manner by modern standards to serve the drama of the text and colour it with dramatic, declamatory aplomb.
Admittedly I was taken aback on my first hearing of the recording’s initial track, the song Liebe by Johann Anton André. In keeping with the tone of the tortured singer in Schwanengesang, the declamatory rendering of the text for this track made me think had I stumbled onto music not from the time of Schubert but of Schoenberg and similar more modern music theatre specialists, so heightened was the vocal drama and altered sound.
My reaction and sensitivity was shattered so skilfully by the recording’s informed performance of Schubert’s stunning late setting of poetic texts. As I became accustomed to the emulation, embodiment and extrapolation by Fraser and Peres Da Costa of radical dramatic or declamatory vocalists like Schubert’s favoured Johann Michael Vogl (also-explained in the brilliant programme notes) I appreciated the shift into a new sound world and singing style to better highlight the poetry.
The often despairing poetry used by Schubert in his late in life lieder setting – during what must have been a painful, fearful time for the ill composer- was coloured by Anna Fraser and Neal Peres Da Costa as never before in my listening to baritone recordings or following the smooth-ish storytelling live on stage.
The addition of two more declamatory songs (Sehnsucht and Serenade) by Johann Anton André – from heavily annotated scores encouraging performer flexibility-further cements the prevalence of such performance practice and enriched this recording projects aims.
Above: Soprano Anna Fraser. Photo by Aleksandra Walker
On this revolutionary recording we encounter the sad, lovestruck, lost-love protaganist in the Schubert vignettes in high female voice. Anna Fraser is a fine vocalist to take the leap into speech-like declamation and variegated vocal swells or timbral alteration to suit the text.
We hear a true, clear and flexible voice. Fraser’s dramatic and operatic experience stands her in good stead whilst focussing on the period practice of reciting the deeply emotional feelings through colourised, almost speech-like song. Her approach and results are stuff of athletic proportion, supported by research such as comparison of recordings and scores, and a voracious energy to complete the cylce as a non-baritone HIP champion.
Fraser’s heightened awareness and delivery of single words with significant colouring is admirable. So too is her maintenance of the stillness we know and love in songs such as ‘Ständchen’, ‘Ihr Bild’ and the final despairing (self-indulgent) lament of ‘Die Taubenpost’, whilst endeavouring to furnish these classics with changed declamatory swoops within their familiar and loved phrases.
Ensuring the vocal efforts and colour in each mini-drama was declared with control and adequate support is project partner and driving force at the period keyboard instrument, Neal Peres Da Costa. His introductions and postludes are exquisitely and interestingly delivered, well-paced and expressively arpeggiated as was the want of a time other than our own. He harnesses and securely speaks the song accompaniments which guide Fraser through challenging but super-effective tempo fluctuations and complex agogic accentuation.
On this recording, songs such as ‘Der Atlas’, ‘Kriegers Ahnung’ and ‘Der Doppelgänger’ owe much to this accompanist, academic and HIP recording artist for their instantly captivating mood, switch of dramatic colour and dramatic, wordless declamation of the exact feeling required.
This recording contributes well to the growing HIP discography of Neal Peres Da Costa and colleagues, and is a pleasing journey into the HIP approach as it affects vocal production as well as the much performed lieder canon. It enhances the global documentation of HIP practice and the benefits of careful preparation as well as research.
This pianist’s exciting captaincy of the fruitful Australian Research Council Discovery Project, The shock of the old: Rediscovering the sounds of bel canto 1700–1900 continues to deliver performances and recordings to inspire, challenge and get us closer to what was really heard at the time it was written.
This latest recording is a rewarding one to listen to, have a re-listen to and experience in or out of track order. This sonic newness on our modern ears is heartily recommended.
