I allowed myself a cautious 'if' and 'but' or two when welcoming the first volume of Chandos's bravely risk-taking Diepenbrock series, but about this second issue there can be no reservations: this is quite stunningly fine music, and superbly performed.
How to describe it? Difficult, but think firstly of a Strauss song on the scale of his tone-poems (the average length of these pieces is over 17 minutes, the longest plays for nearly 23). Imagine, next, a palette often darker than Strauss's, with highlights more glinting than brilliant and textures of an at times fantastic richness. They must be hellishly difficult to conduct; one can readily imagine them sounding murky and clogged in unsympathetic hands, hence their neglect until now, perhaps. Vonk clarifies them very beautifully, but without in any way diminishing their luxuriance or giving the slightest suggestion that flawed orchestration is being helped. His faith in the originality and the sheer rightness of Diepenbrock's vision is powerfully communicated.
The texts that Diepenbrock chose for these symphonic Lieder (by Novalis, Holderlin and Nietzsche) deal with deep philosophical issues that were clearly of great moment to him, and he responded with impressively big musical images. Where a tolling bell reminds Nietzsche of the folly of human existence it is no mere onomatopoeic tintinnabulation that we hear, but real and expressive music suggested both by bells and by the sentiment of the poem. Diepenbrock's imagination is rich enough even to engage critically with Nietzsche's nihilism; the most memorable moment in Im grossen Schweigen is the epilogue, in which an eloquent and beautiful melody (in fact the plainchant Ave maris stella) triumphantly denies the bitterness of Nietzsche's conclusion.
It is a noble song, this, with its urgently powerful sea music and the solemn gravity of its declamation, but the second of the Hymnen an die Nacht is scarcely less fine. The images here are of bright but transitory day (a vivid trumpet call) contrasted with the consolatory dark warmth of night (a richly Wagnerian texture of scalic motifs), but the voice meditating upon this contrast has its own gravely lyrical subject, which rises to a splendidly sonorous, almost Mahlerian climax with solo strings supporting the vocal line. The Hymne is slighter, the metre of Novalis's text trapping Diepenbrock into a rather repetitive 12/8 rhythm, but Die Nacht is a gorgeous nocturne, more serene than the second of the Hymnen an die Nacht, with a sunset glow to it. The main melody here is of an entranced lyricism, its kinship to Mahler pointed by the presence of a mandoline in the orchestra, but what seems to be pure Diepenbrock is the frequent use of a passionate obbligato violin, an image of the humanity to which the beauty of night is indifferent; another nobly beautiful song, and sung with full-voiced solemnity by Linda Finnie, while Robert Holl has all the grandeur of tone and utterance that Im grossen Schweigen needs. And, praise be, the recording is of excellent quality, with exemplary balance between voices and orchestra. An exciting and important coupling; I do urge you to hear it.'