Search - Schubert, Fassbaender, Reimann :: Schwanengesang / Lieder

The best of Fassbaender's strangely compelling Schubert

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

(4 out of 5 stars)

"For quite a period in the Eighties, the German mezzo Birgitte Fassbaender rode high with critics for her many lieder recordings. She has an intense, sharp-edged voice that is quite strange until one gets used to it. Never smiling, sometimes scolding, she makes her effects by turning each song into a plaintive existential cry. Very odd in Schubert, indeed. But Fassbaender was ambitious and imaginative; she recorded all three of Schubert's song cycles for male voice, either for EMI or DG.



I find her Schone Mullerin too aggressively attacked--this is her besetting flaw--and her Winterreise too bleak and tough, but this 1992 Schwanengesang is very stimulating, and probably unique in the CD catalog, since the cycle is always sung by a baritone or bass voice, often of heroic proportions (Hotter, Terfel). It takes power to put across Der Atlas and depth of voice for Der Doppelganger, but these are among Fassbaender's most successful songs, since she is quite capable of singing with total abandon. She is restrained (for her) and almost lyrical in many of these songs; even so, her attack can be both thrilling and scary. Her longtime accompanist Aribert Reimann gives himself permisison to aasault the piano at fitting intervals.



I suppose the touchstone for a curious listener would be the famous Serenade, which in Fassbaender's hands is a lover's complaint(!) redolent with disappointment and sorrow. As I said, very odd, but there is no doubt that this singer is an artist, and her lieder recordings deamnd to be heard."