Let me begin with a straight question to Preiser. Do they seriously think that the way to interest the English-speaking public in Mendelssohn's songs—still not very familiar here—is by presenting them entirely without texts, let alone translations, and with a brief note that not only does not mention any of the songs recorded but is abominably translated into a ludicrous travesty of the English language? This is shoddy treatment for a disc of really fine singing, fully confirming AB's high opinion of Holzmair in his Die schone Mullerin (Preiser (CD) 93337, 3/89)—though this Mendelssohn programme has taken nearly six years to reach us.
The seductive quality of this lyrical baritone voice, and Holzmair's beautiful legato line, can be heard at its best in such songs as Scheidend and the charm of Gruss; but there is metal in the voice too, and he is equally able to expand to convey rapture, as in the Lenau Fruhlingslied (from Op. 47, not to be confused with the gentle little early song of the same title), and he is splendidly responsive throughout, in dynamics and colour, to verbal nuances. It is a curious paradox that though Mendelssohn showed considerable taste in his choice of poems he was seldom fired by words and could not only set them with a strange disregard for correct accentuation but would frequently repeat them unnecessarily in Procrustean attempts to make them fit his melodic scheme. But there is a greater variety of styles than is sometimes supposed, from almost folklike songs (Lieblingsplatzchen, Winterlied) to the brilliantly sinister, fiery scherzo of Neue Liebe and the drama of Reiselied or Allnachtlich im Traume (a striking contrast to the familiar Schumann setting)—these last three songs also giving greater opportunities to Anna Wagner than most of Mendelssohn's rather unadventurous piano parts. He was not, it has to be admitted, one of the great Lieder writers, but there are pearls here and there, and his songs could scarcely be better or more imaginatively interpreted than here.'