Search - Hugo [Composer] Wolf, Geoffrey Parsons, Felicity Lott :: Felicity Lott ~ Wolf - Mörike-Lieder · Goethe-Lieder / Geoffrey Parsons

Calm, ethereal singing--something rare in Wolf

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 01/05/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Hugo Wolf's condensed, crystalline music forces passion under a microscope: the outbursts are tiny but just as intense. The singer's challenge is to match and sustain such pained intensity. Only a few with sweet lyrical voices (Elly Ameling immediately comes to mind) can soften Wolf to the point of making him pretty--it's even rarer to have this approach sound right.



Felicity Lott manages, though, in this 1989 colleciton of Morike and Goethe lieder. Unlike Ameling, who can sound like vapid, Lott's voice is motherly, calm, and reassuring. She wants to ease Wolf's pain, and I want to join her. There is rapture in a song like Im Fruhling (under pressure the voice spreads a little, though), but the prevailing tone is soft-grained. By contrast, Birgitte Fassbaender is aggrieved and conflicted, but there's room for both in Wolf's fractious romantic world. Geoffrey Parsons accompanies beautifully, also on the lyrical side."

Not a choice recital of these Lieder

Ingrid Heyn | Melbourne, Australia | 07/02/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Someone should have told Felicity Lott to sing German with a German accent. But clearly no one did. Her German is simply dreadfully English, and although she gains something from the phrasing of that excellent accompanist, Geoffrey Parsons, it is not enough to save this recital CD from being uninteresting and uninspiring.



Wolf's Lieder are some of the most exquisite and detailed Lieder ever composed, but one would not guess that from Felicity Lott's singing. Her vocal phrasing is careful but somehow rings falsely; her tone is like a small boat sometimes drifting off course (not pitch-wise, but the centre of the note becomes white, shrill or raw in tone); her interpretation is superficial.



There are some terrific recordings of Wolf Lieder. Rather than this one, I would like to recommend Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elly Ameling, Barbara Bonney, von Otter, Olaf Bär, to name the best of them. This recording did not enrapture me, and I just cannot recommend it."