This is a fascinating collection of Lieder, all written by these American composers before the age of 30. Very few of the songs relate to the mature personalities of Ives, MacDowell or Griffes but they are far from negligible in performances like these. At their best almost any European composer would have been proud to have written them in the years around the turn of the century. Collectors of Lieder will have plenty to interest them in comparing the American response to Heine and other German romantics with better-known examples.
There are surprises, too. Most of the Ives Lieder must have been student works from the composer's Yale years when Horatio Parker encouraged him to set the texts to famous songs. In a footnote to the score of Ich grolle nicht Ives explained that he had been much criticized for doing this but published the songs ''not so much in spite of this criticism but because of it''. All the same, he adapted several of his German settings to quite different English poems—thus Heine's Gruss would become Shelley's The World's Wanderers and his Fruhlingslied was later set to Wordsworth's The World's Wanderers! Sometimes Ives provided his own substitute English texts—since he had virtually no performances there was no point in making things more difficult with German. His ravishing Wiegenlied started life in partnership with a poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
As a whole this collection reminded me of the old DG LP of Fischer-Dieskau singing Ives which memorably allied the great Lieder-singer with the American perspective on the same tradition (7/76—nla). Hampson often has a similar quality—compare him also with Henry Herford who opens Volume 2 of his Ives collection on Unicorn-Kanchana ((CD) DKPCD9112, 3/92) with Feldeinsamkeit (in English). Even in his youth, Ives can rise to the occasion when something more than a charming melody is required. Ich grolle nicht for example, where Ives becomes more dissonant than anything else on this CD on behalf of Heine's spurned lover. No need to apologize to Schumann here.
After a glorious Heine setting from MacDowell there is polish within bounds in his other songs and a Wolf-like postlude to Nachtlied. There are many more songs by Griffes, who died young at a time when he had only just begun to fuse French impressionism and Scriabin into his remarkable late style. All the same the Geibel setting Wohl lag ich has a Straussian ebullience and sweep and the ballad about the two kings who kill each other in a quarrel over a girl, Zwei Konige sassen auf Orkadal, is convincingly blood-curdling.
Altogether these revelatory performances make the best possible advocacy for this unusual repertoire, making the youthful composers surpass themselves. The recording is well engineered and edited, although at the end of Weil' auf mir the piano is cut slightly short prematurely and Hampson unusually wavers at the end of Griffes's Meeres Stille. The pianist, Armen Guzelimian, is admirably supportive throughout.'