Search - Matthias Goerne, Schumann, Schneider :: Lieder

These songs will melt and break your heart. Listeners accustomed to Schumann's single-poet cycles may be surprised at the poems' uneven quality, and that, like Schubert, he could set them all with equal empathy. The program includes famous and unfamiliar songs from both Schumann's early fertile and more barren later years, mostly love offerings for Clara: hopeful, anxious, ardent, passionate, as well as somber, sorrowful and despairing. Goerne opens with the vigorous "Ins Freie," then groups the songs around a mood, allowing the listener--and himself--to become fully one with it. This means many slow, pensive, inward, tender, yearning songs in succession, but they contain so much diversity that there is never a hint of sameness. Besides, the singing is absolutely riveting. Goerne's voice is like soft, dark velvet; its warmth enfolds the listener's ear with a caressing, aching beauty and purity. Its variety of color and nuance is matched by Goerne's range of expression and intensity; he can evoke the ghostly apparitions in "Mein Wagen rollet langsam," project the soaring ecstasy in "Widmung," the sorrow of parting, the chaste adoration of a flower for the moon, and the menace of the dramatic ballads "Die Löwenbraut" and "Belsazar." Even that old chestnut, "Die beiden Grenadiere," becomes both moving and heroic. He is mightily abetted by Eric Schneider, a superb partner who makes one aware that Schumann's wonderfully written, poetic piano parts are independent miniature masterpieces. --Edith Eisler