The Gramophone Choice

Haugtussa, Op 67. Two Brown Eyes, Op 5 No 1. I Love You, Op 5 No 3. A Swan, Op 25 No 2. With a Waterlily, Op 25 No 4. Hope, Op 26 No 1. Spring, Op 33 No 2. Beside the stream, Op 33 No 5. From Monte Pincio, Op 39 No 1. Six Songs, Op 48. Spring Showers, Op 49 No 6. While I wait, Op 60 No 3. Farmyard Song, Op 61 No 3

Anne Sofie von Otter mez Bengt Forsberg pf

DG 477 6326GGP (68‘ · DDD · T/t). Buy from Amazon

Von Otter is at the peak of her powers here, ­glorying in this repertoire. In the Haugtussa cycle she projects her imagination of the visionary herd-girl with absolute conviction. She’s no less successful in the German settings that follow. The sad depths of ‘One day, my thought’ from Six Songs, Op 48, the hopelessness of Goethe’s ‘The Time of Roses’ (Op 48 No 5), a setting of great beauty, are encompassed with unfettered ease, but so are the lighter pleasures of ‘Lauf der Welt’. Even the familiar ‘A Dream’ (Op 48 No 6) emerges as new in her daringly big-boned reading. Her readings are immeasurably enhanced throughout by the imaginative playing of Bengt Forsberg. They breathe fresh life into ‘A Swan’ and, in the almost as familiar ‘With a Waterlily’, another superb Ibsen setting, the questing spirit expressed in the music is marvellously captured by the performers. 

Additional Recommendation

Six Ibsen Songs, Op 25. Six Songs, Op 48. Melodies of the Heart, Op 5. Haugtussa, Op 67. The Princess, EG133 

Katarina Karnéus mez Julius Drake pf

Hyperion CDA67670 (68’ · DDD · T/t). Buy from Amazon

Anne Sofie von Otter’s Grieg recital for DG (see above) did much to encourage singers outside Scandinavia to bring back to the concert platform – and the public again to listen to – songs which their great-grandparents knew well but their parents had almost forgotten. Now another front-ranking Swedish mezzo-soprano has recorded core components of the Grieg song repertoire. Like her compatriot, Katarina Karnéus includes the Op 67 Haugtussa cycle, the Ibsen settings, the six German lyrics of Op 48 and the early Hans Christian Andersen Melodies of the Heart, adding, suitably, the less well known ‘The Princess’ to words by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.

Compare Karnéus, von Otter and Kirsten Flagstad (one of at least three recordings) in Haugtussa. Karnéus and Julius Drake are all over the imagery, scenery and sexuality of Garborg’s verse novel in thrilling and well worked detail. Flagstad may appear at first hearing to be limiting herself to heroic declamation and her pianist (regular collaborator Edwin McArthur) just mapping out the written notes, but her sheer joy in singing her own language, and the subtlety of her pointing of the text (a half-smile, a raised eyebrow) and cunning use of her large voice make their own points. Von Otter has something of both sides – a weightier tone and more reserve than Karnéus but a much wider colour range than Flagstad chooses to deploy – and Bengt Forsberg is a magician in these accompaniments.

Elsewhere the Karnéus performances are good and lively in the Scandinavian lyrics (a passionate ‘Jeg elsker dig’, a good range of moods in the Ibsen settings), more formal in the German settings. All Saints’ Church in Finchley, north London, sounds especially resonant here, not everywhere an advantage in such text-oriented settings. Lots to enjoy and celebrate then, but don’t ignore the competition.

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