Hunt Lieberson in one of her very best lieder programs
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 03/28/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The New YOrk Festival of Sng, when I've encountered them on disc, present a variety of singers, but the two pianists who founded it in 1988, Michael Barrett and Steven Blier, remain constants. Here the trasure is Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing the seven Mignon songs of Schumann Op. 98. Not all are masterpieces, but her warm, sensitive, utterly musical performance makes you believe they are. You can hear the same song cycle in Hunt Lieberson's recently released Wigmore Hall recital that also contains Faurenliebe und Leben, but here she's fresher, the acoustic is less hollow, and the piano sounds better.
I wish I could praise her partner, baritone Kurt Ollmann, for his half of this CD, but his version of the Kerner Lieder op. 35, is dull and at times lachrymose. These are better songs than most of the Mignon cycle, but with great interpreters like Hampson and Fischer-Dieskau, this rendition is a pass. The prgram ends with three of Schumann's msot famous duets. As before, Hunt Lieberson's part is exquisite, Ollmann's intrusively clumsy."