Search - R. Strauss, Schreier, Shetler :: R. Strauss: Krämerspiegel / Ausgewählte Lieder

Sweetly heartsick

Pablo F. Melendez | Ankara, Turkey | 03/21/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I first heard Schreier in my midteens, when I would listen to the recordings of a music student then rooming with my family back in Guatemala. Going through a lonely gay adolescence, hearing Bach sung by him and others, I could see how a composer could become personally as important as a fifth evangelist. I was religious then, although I still very much love Bach.I have heard Schreier played seldom since, but I have always compared him to every tenor I happened hear, and, however much I enjoyed the singing, I usually found lacking Schreier's utter lack of strain, his lucid eloquence, his unadorned authority. His name was hardly mentioned by the gushing nostalgics that one usually hears during radio opera intermissions. Years ago he was featured in a TV performance of the Christmas oratorio which I happily taped and thenceforward there's been nothing, really.His absence from LA media, I figured, meant that Schreier musn't be that good. Somehow it happened that the difficulty of Bach was his well-fitting niche. Otherwise, maybe, he was just a nice enough voice to put up with, not much to look into. Still, I was attached to my memory of him so I proposed to test this a little. I'd try out this Strauss disk, I thought. To me Strauss was just OK. Let's see if this is something I'd care for.It is.How does Schreier do it? Here he has escaped to a land so distantly bound by poetry and theatrics and I've gone there with him. I am forced to acknowledge once again the power and mystery of music and I hardly know how to explain it. Who has done this? Was it Strauss or Schreier. I am happily befuddled. I don't care. 'Allerseelen' is branded in my mind as a glimpse into this magic, and I think I owe it to this tenor. I am grateful to him."