Schumann’s four choral ballads, dating from his final ill-starred years as conductor of the Dusseldorf Orchestra and Choir, are having a harder fight for recognition than the four now widely acclaimed symphonies. Rescued on LP by that same city’s forces in the late 1980s under Bernard Klee, they were at last reissued on CD by EMI, in the UK in 1994 (nla), and until recently remained the only challenge for this brave new Chandos venture.
Based on folk poems by Geibel, the third of the four tells the tale of a page who loves, and is loved by, the daughter of an outraged king, who slays him, throws his body into the sea – and pays for it through the demise of his whole court, and even his daughter at her enforced wedding to another. This Schumann matches with simple yet subtly interrelated music offering telling atmospheric contrasts of hearty huntsmen, courtiers and fluid mermaids.
Both orchestrally and vocally, the Danish team responds with sympathetic straightforwardness and directness. But in the first three sections Schonwandt’s liking for more leisurely tempos than Klee’s slightly militates against the tale’s immediacy and vitality, nor is the solo characterisation quite as keenly contrasted in terms of vocal colour as in the more graphic German performance. But the extra 11/2 minutes Schonwandt allows himself for the last section brings home the final tragedy with greater eloquence – not least in the compassionate singing of the mezzo-soprano narrator, Marianne Rorholm.
Each ballad in Schonwandt’s projected cycle is partnered by a symphony, here the Fourth in D minor, given a good, traditionally full-bodied and romantic reading, making no attempt to disguise its thickish scoring. But competition in this field is hot and strong from recent aspirants and legendary giants alike. And I’m bound to say that of the latter it is that highly charged Schumann devotee, Wolfgang Sawallisch (with the Dresden Staatskapelle) who, with his urgency in faster tempos and deeper and sometimes more sinister searchings elsewhere, is more likely than the Danish newcomers to have you sitting on the edge of your seat.'