This is an uncoventional recital, unconventionally performed. Hildegard Behrens in her own note tells us that this is virtually the programme she and her pianist performed at Carnegie Hall shortly before recording it in Paris almost two years ago (why do some records take so long to appear?). The first half consisted of Frauenliebe followed by the songs deriving from Mary Stuart's life. The second proceeded through songs about night and death, to those of rebirth—the lullabies—thence to a group about disappointed love, eventually returning to the thoughts of death, as represented by Berg's Nacht. Thus we have an intelligent plan, which has been intelligently executed.
However, I could not pretend that Behrens is so successful in all the songs as she is in some. To start with, her Frauenliebe is hard to categorize. She begins in altogether too lugubrious and also too careful form, unhelped by tonal unsteadiness. This is surely not the expression of awakening love Schumann intended. But then in the sixth and bes song, that peculiar Behrens gift of expressing naked emotion comes into its own. All the Innigkeit of poem and setting are conveyed and so it continues in the song about motherhood and the final one of total numbness at the death of the loved one. In this latter part of the cycle the soprano's reading is among the more discerning and moving of those available. David Syrus also improves from a rather stiff start to an affectionate account of the recollective postlude.
Zumsteeg's setting of Schiller's Maria Stuart is a pleasant discovery, even more so Elgar's Queen Mary's song, with its accompaniment suggesting the plucked string and its wistful melody. Behrens sings it with an answering wistfulness but her English diction is poor. Truth to tell, her German diction is also far from clear, so that only a fairly generalized impression is gleaned from her Schubert settings. The later romantics fair better as one might expect; Behrens's voice and manner, as we know, is well suited to Brahms and Strauss, and both Berg songs are filled with the requisite languour and sensuousness. Of the two Bach pieces, Bist du bei mir is too fast and wants tonal focus; the lesser known song, from the Clavierbuchlein, is a welcome addition to the recital and delicately shaped.
Even when you are not entirely convinced that the singer has mastered every detail of these songs as the best Lieder singers have done before her, you will be carried away by her innate conviction. You will not be helped by the poor editing from EMI in the booklet. There is virtually no information about the songs; often even opus numbers are omitted, and the texts and translations are not opposite each other but are bunched together, German, then French, then English. It is time that such a major company restored a proper editorial policy to its presentation, or at least did not accept inferior material from France.'