This is rather a case of ''the singer, not the song'', for not even his most ardent admirers would claim that Mendelssohn was one of the great Lieder-writers. He was brought up in the conservative tradition of Zelter, far removed from Viennese trends, so that although his songs reveal his mellifluous melodic gift they lack the diversity and psychological insight of Schubert, the depth of Brahms or, of course, any hint of the later sophistication of Wolf. For much of the time he was content to stick to strophic form, and although he showed discrimination in his choice of poets—Goethe, Heine, Schiller, Holty, Eichendorff and Lenau are among those represented here—words do not seem often to have fired his imagination. He was sometimes cavalier about following natural speech-rhythms, and he had no compunction about a quasi-Procrustean treatment of poets' lines in order to fit his musical scheme, often by endless repetition (as in Erster Verlust, at which Goethe would probably have burst a blood-vessel).
Yet there are a few Lieder, in various moods, which exemplify Mendelssohn at his best, and in Nathalie Stutzmann they find an interpreter who does everything possible for them. Hers is a beautiful voice, ripe and velvety but not plummy, and she is more responsive to verbal nuance than might be anticipated from a casual reading of the texts. She shows a fine legato line and some tender mezza voce in Scheidend; she can float high notes ethereally (as in Der Blumenkranz) or fill them powerfully (as at the climax of Nachtlied); she brings intensity to Byron's ''Sun of the sleepless'' (Schlafloser Augen Leuchte) and changes colour effectively for the deflating final question in Heine's Reiselied. Dalton Baldwin deals sympathetically with Mendelssohn's pianistic but not particularly notable accompaniments and fully rises to the occasion in the storms of Des Madchens Klage and the agitation of the Hexenlied. Texts and translations are provided but would have been the better for less casual proof-reading.'