Two general points first: in his January “Quarterly” JBS touched on the fact that so many singers today, especially baritones, choose the soft-palate technique. Keenlyside opts for what we used to hear, what JBS called “the brighter, harder tone”, more daring in its application, with top notes attacked in full-frontal manner rather than in the “softer-grained, less penetrative” technique of baritones such as Goerne. Of course there’s room for both styles, but I know I much prefer the singing, forthright and virile, that I hear on this disc, which is not to say that Keenlyside, where appropriate, cannot adopt a warm, rounded, seductive tone.
Then Graham Johnson in his notes says that what we have always lacked is a convincing way of performing late Schumann songs, often spare in texture and elusive in style. Well, he and Keenlyside seem to have found one here in their wholly admirable versions of the very different Opp. 98a and 117. The Op. 98a settings of the Harper’s outpourings from Wilhelm Meister have always stood in the shade of those by Schubert and Wolf. This pair show incontrovertibly that there’s much to be said for Schumann’s versions, capturing the essence of the old man’s sad musings, as set by the composer in a typically free and imaginative way, alert to every nuance in the texts. The extroverted Lenau Husarenlieder could hardly be more different. Keenlyside identifies in turn with the bravado of the first, the cynicism of the second, and the eerie, death-dominated mood of the fourth. The third, as Johnson avers, is a bit of a dud.
Then it’s back to the miracle year of 1840 for three seldom-heard Geibel Knabenhorn settings, Op. 30. The pair enter into the open-hearted mood called for by these songs, most of all in the irresistible “Der Hidalgo”, theirs the equal of, if not superior to, Heinrich Schlusnus’s famous rendering (Preiser, 1/94) in terms of genuine swagger. Keenlyside is just as forthright in the ballad Die Lowenbraut and in those of Op. 35, the well-known Kerner settings, which display Schumann’s Florestan side, and he brings impressive control to the Eusebius ones, not least the all-enveloping “Stille Tranen”. It’s only when you go to Fischer-Dieskau’s overwhelming live 1959 interpretation on Orfeo – unfair comparison, I know, but there it is – that you realize how much a larger range of expression and controlled technique can add to the meaning of this quasi-cycle, but the new one is convincing in its own right and unerringly paced.
The recording, Johnson’s persuasive playing and his long and informative notes are of the exceptional standard we have come to expect from this source. Strongly recommended.'