I had a few quibbles about the early and not quite mature songs that CPO included in Vol. 1 of this series (6/99), but I have none at all about its successor. Few of the songs here are well known, and several appear on CD for the first time, but almost all of them are impressive, many quite memorably so. They are all relatively youthful – the latest set in this volume was written in 1901, when Pfitzner was 32 – but if he had written no more songs, these alone would prove him a major composer of Lieder. Where to begin? With Op. 6 No. 3, perhaps, in which a fine vocal line over darkly rolling keyboard figuration conjures up a powerful image of an exhausted migrant bird struggling to reach the shore. A magnificent blaze of sonority depicts a brilliant sunrise but also bleakly implies that it will be the bird’s last. Op. 6 No. 5 is just as remarkable, an almost monotone accompaniment and a slowly intensifying vocal line describing a couple walking through woods as love slowly dawns upon them: the phrase ‘I love you’ emerges to extraordinarily long note values (prodigious breath control from Christoph Pregardien) as though everything had implied it all along, but the poet is none the less rapt with amazement at it.
Pfitzner also has the gift of profundity through simplicity – try Op. 7 No. 3, in which his music says all that Heyse’s poem rather stumblingly attempts to say about one man’s sorrow being another’s joy – and if you’ve ever thought of him as off-puttingly learned rather than melodiously fresh, almost every song here (especially Op. 9, perhaps: all settings of Eichendorff) will change your mind. There is even one funny song, its point largely concealed by the booklet’s omission of its concluding lines, but greatly enjoyed by Andreas Schmidt. German-speakers, by the way, will find a few mistranslations in the booklet, of which ‘the man upstairs’ for ‘der Herr’ (‘the Lord’) is the most entertaining. As in Vol. 1, Schmidt and Pregardien share most of the material; both are excellent, though in the big gestures of Op. 4 Schmidt forces his tone once or twice. Kaufmann’s rather fragile soprano is confined to Op. 5, where a pretty love-song and a tender lullaby suit her rather well. All three pianists are admirable and the recordings are exemplary. Anyone interested in Lieder who has so far not investigated Pfitzner will find this collection a revelation; I can hardly wait for the remaining volumes.'