Renewed praise first of all for Graham Johnson, author of this huge project. We should feel privileged to be present at the unfolding of what will surely be seen as one of the historic landmarks of recording history. That becomes clearer with every addition to the project as we traverse in a carefully ordered fashion the highways and byways of Schubert’s vast output. The latest is as cogent an example as any of Johnson’s method, a masterly exposition, in written words and musical performance, of the crucial relationship between Goethe and Schubert upon which Johnson throws a good deal of new light which space forbids me to describe in detail.
As ever here the familiar happily rubs shoulders with the unfamiliar. Not all is notable Schubert, but the lesser songs, among them one or two hearty occasional pieces, merely serve to place in perspective the greater ones. The CD begins with one of the latter, Schafers Klagelied, in a finely honed, dramatic performance by Ainsley, who is heard later on the disc always to advantage. Track 2 introduces the thrilling new soprano from Germany, Christine Schafer (already praised by me for her solos in Helmuth Rilling’s Elijah on Hanssler Classic, 9/95), a kind of amalgam of Popp and Silja, if you can imagine such a singer. Good as she is in this first version of An Mignon she is better in the sadly neglected Der Gott und die Bajadere, as Johnson avers. This is the only song in the genre about prostitution, and a haunting one, even though, throughout its appreciable length, it relies on just one melody. Schafer precisely catches its haunting atmosphere.
She returns as an equally arresting advocate of various versions of Mignon’s songs, a couple of them revelatory simply through being long overlooked in favour of later settings of the same text. But the climax of her contribution comes in Ganymed. With Johnson providing exactly the right rhythmic lilt at the piano, her voice conveys all the elation of poem and music. In parenthesis I should point out that this reading is superior in every way to the Connell/Johnson reading in Vol. 5 (2/90), not least in a more forward, present recording: Hyperion have now got this aspect of the project just right.
Schafer is the child in a three-voice rendering of Erlkonig, a manner of performing the piece that has the composer’s blessing. It was once tried on an ancient Columbia 78 (later transferred to EMI’s “Schubert on Record” set on LP, 10/82 – nla). There Thill was narrator and Erl King: here Ainsley is his worthy successor, with George as the father. Johnson has surely never surpassed his account here of the hair-raisingly difficult piano part, even in his electrifying account with Sarah Walker (Vol. 8, 10/90). Then he is just as accomplished with Keenlyside in a thrilling account of another masterpiece engendered by response to Goethe’s genius, An Schwager Kronos. This sturdy baritone confirms his form in the quite different, Papageno-like Der Goldschmiedsgesell, my discovery of this disc, but yields points, in terms of colouring his tone, to Fischer-Dieskau (DG, 2/91) in the second version (D368) of Jagers Abendlied. George, who perhaps has the least ingratiating songs to perform, sings with feeling and style but sometimes an excess of vibrato.
A short review can only touch on the most significant delights in what is an engrossing and invaluable addition to this series.'