Search - Dietrich Henschel, Hugo [Composer] Wolf, Kent Nagano :: Hugo Wolf: Prometheus (Orchesterlieder)

Nagano's Wolf Orchestra Songs: Bringing down fire from heave

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 04/21/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In the 24 tracks of this single red book CD, we get all of the individual Hugo Wolf songs that the composer himself orchestrated from his own piano versions. Dietrich Henschel is the baritone, Juliane Banse is the soprano. American west coast conductor Kent Nagano ( now splitting time between Montreal and the Bavarian Radio in Munich?)leads what used to be the radio orchestra of Berlin before it changed its name to Deutsche Symphonie.



So why five stars?



Well, for one thing the singing and the playing are just fine. Henschel has the darkened baritonal timbers to carry off the late romantic narratives without sounding in the least underpowered or lightweight. His middle voice is a few hairs-breadths from being equal in velvet and pearls to that of the revered other Dietrich (Fischer-Dieskau) in his prime. He gets Promethean when the music stirs up without undue bluster or bark, sometimes a singer's pitfall in this over-heated post-Wagnerian repertoire. Ms. Banse is fine, too. Her singing encompasses the challenging sweep Wolf sets for his songs, from simpler lyric story-telling to ecstatic celebrations when the soprano needs to soar over the whole band playing full-tilt. The key to these heights is that they remain songs, even with orchestral accompaniment. Neither singer falls into the trap of being overly operatic. Even better neither singer tries to make this genre more Wagnerian than it actually already is.



Nagano and the band are a mix of cool precision - with their phrasing so full of passing deft touches that this knowing magic cannot be accidental? - plus vivid musical colors and heartfelt drama. Like his singers, Nagano and the orchestra manage to capture Wolf's rich, calorie-filled textures without turning them into Wagner. One imagines that if Nagano ever tackles the music of that father of total music drama, you will find yourself hearing both how Wagner sums up, overflowing the traditional foundations, and how Wagner points forward - to Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, and Messiaen.



As it happens, Nagano's experiences in the modern music of the past century allow him to lead this Wolf set as if Mahler (Song cycles, Das Lied), Schoenberg (Gurre-Lieder), and Zemlinsky (Lyrische Symphonie) were sitting in the audience. The ripe, late romantic legacy fulfilling (and at the same time, over-turning) itself - and the forward motion of music history - are nowhere more evident than in the high drama of the Feuerreitter and Prometheus songs.



If there is a down side to this disc, it must be the grab bag collection of Wolf songs which got dressed in orchestral garb for the emerging, enlarging concert hall. These 24 songs are just that, a collection, not an integrated cycle. The ear moves from lilt and whimsy to pensive angst, to heaven-storming tragic drama.



The engineers have captured all of this in very good sound. Bravo, then."

Fantastic!

Robert S. Costic | 07/16/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a beautiful album. The songs have a rich, deep sound. A good recommendation for those who like the songs of Wagner and Mahler."