Once again the Hyperion Schubert Edition has literally surpassed itself. Elly Ameling, whose Schubert singing on disc over the years has surely been one of the adornments of the history of recording, also surpasses herself. Obviously stimulated by her participation in what is becoming a series of high repute, she seems to shed her years in producing performances that are of particular beauty and eloquence (obvious words but no others will do), not to mention her total command of phrasing and technique. As has been his wont throughout the series, Graham Johnson once more proves himself a past master at selecting horses for courses so that, from first to last here, he chooses songs that are perfectly suited to Ameling's vocal and personal character. Who else but Ameling and Johnson could make something so exceptional out of the ballad that opens their programme? On paper such an apparent failure as to have been written off by most Schubertian scholars and never recorded before, it here emerges as a highly original piece both in its structure and effect, combining recitative and melody in a peculiarly Schubertian manner to tell its Gothic tale.
In reviewing these Hyperion discs I have usually alighted on one song as a particular discovery. In this selection of songs written in 1815, there are two—Die Sterbende, a Matthisson setting conveying the message ''Death where is they sting'' that is quite arresting in its simplicity, and Von Ida, one of several Kosegarten settings in this collection, an other-worldly song with its ''exquisitely modal and palely translucent three-part invention'' (Johnson). Both have the inestimable benefit of Ameling's poised, tenderly accented singing—and both rate high in my canon of Schubert interpretation. The urgent Das Sehnen, another Kosegarten setting, the extraordinarily improvisatory Das Rosenband (a Klopstock text also set by Strauss), the earlier version of Goethe's Meeresstille (what a sustained piano!), all are sung in a similarly inward and revealing manner. The lighter, smiling Ameling is to be heard in another Goethe setting, Die Spinnerin, and in the Mayrhofer piece, Liane, in which the protagonist goes to her tryst in a boat, a quite unjustly neglected example of Schubert's rippling water music. Then at the end we encounter convincing accounts of Mignon (Schubert's only setting of Goethe's Kennst du das Land?) and his earliest attempts, two versions of Sehnsucht, both written on the same day—interesting but inferior to later settings.
Even then I have neglected to mention the familiar but welcome An den Mond (Holty), lovingly interpreted in voice and piano, the quite haunting Idens Schwanenlied (Kosegarten), a spare, graceful, unaccountably sad piece, and the deliberately Mozartian Luisens Antwort (Kosegarten), a reply to the older composer's Das Lied der Trennung, and the histrionic, equally Mozartian—it has an uncanny resemblance to the Requiem's Lacrimosa—Des Madchens Klage (Schiller), in which Ameling's dramatic singing makes one regret her deliberate avoidance of the opera stage. Just once or twice here, where Ameling presses on her tone, it can lose quality these days. I would occasionally have liked to hear Johnson's piano given more prominence: his unfailingly sensitive, responsive (to his singer) playing is surely sometimes more modest in effect than either Johnson or his producer intends. But this is a very marginal reservation about a lovely and highly recommended disc.'