Search - Johannes Brahms, Brigitte Fassbaender, Irwin Gage :: Brahms: Lieder

Brilliant, original Brahms singing

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 10/24/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Acclaimed as Birgitte Fassbaender was as a lieder singer, she really outdoes herself here. Brahms is not usually a dramatic song writer, but the singer attacks each number with a knife, cutting through Biedermeier stuffiness and bourgeois poetizing to give us thrilling new readings. They have both rawness and rapture. Fassbaender's voice always carries a strong element of plaintive anguish (as I hear it), and she is more declamatory than reflective, but in 1984, when this recording was made, she could also impart a sense of tenderness amid sorrow. It's a perfect match between singer and composer, because beneath the melodic sweep that carries these songs forward, there are hidden, distrubing currents.



Fassbaender finds thsse dark eddies with uncanny nstinctiveness. Irwin Gage follows her lead -- his accompaniment feels just as turbulent. The only flaw is that the recorded ambience is somewhat echoey. No matter. This CD needs to find a wider audeince than it is likely to get buried so inconspicuously at Amazon."