This of course is not the first Dichterliebe recording by a countertenor or alto. The Hungaroton version by Paul Esswood (4/90) had lodged so clearly in the memory that I was confident of finding it on the shelves. Not there, however, nor were any notes of the record to be found in the note-boxes, so it appears I never heard it, and only the vividness of MEO's review made me suppose otherwise. Anyway, it is not hard to imagine it as being, in most respects, quite unlike the new recording by Jochen Kowalski. Yet one word of MEO's, and that not a very complimentary one, occurs also in my present notes. There must be some quality, a liability of the countertenor voice when it strives for a romantic type of expression, or perhaps for an intense pathos: ''petulant'', I find I've written against songs Nos. 8 and 9, while MEO wrote of Esswood that when he tried, in some of the Dichterliebe songs, for ''more expansive ardour and more robustness'' then ''a rather nagging, even petulant edge is rather too often the result''.
Now Kowalski's tone does not nag, and ''expansive ardour'' is precisely the feature which distinguishes his style from that of most others, but the danger that such ardour will suggest petulance must raise, or underline, the question as to whether the nineteenth-century song repertoire is really open to the countertenor at all. My feeling is that it is not. Yet Kowalski sings beautifully in the quieter songs such as ''Hor' ich das Liedchen klingen'' and ''Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen''. He colours effectively in ''Ich hab' im Traum geweinet'' and makes a powerful crescendo to ''Tranenflut''. There is much else to admire, such as the mastery of vocal range in the last two songs. Even so, the weight for ''Im Rhein'' and the ring for ''Ich grolle nicht'' are wanting: and I don't think it is the mere unfamiliarity of the voice in this repertoire that makes one say, at the very start, ''No, it isn't right''.
In Mozart and Beethoven he is better suited. He makes one think of Cherubino in An Chloe and Oiseaux, si tous les ans; and the spiritual intensity of Beethoven's ''Vom Tode'' and the contrasting ''Gottes Macht und Vorsehung'' find apt expression. Shelley Katz plays splendidly, with strong, nimble fingers, in the ''Busslied'', though the lower keys of Ridente la calma and some of the other Mozart songs rather thicken the texture. In Dichterliebe the pianist's style is not always congenial, the right hand pounding away in ''Ich grolle nicht'', and the first phrase of all in the cycle not having quite the singing-tone that is its due. An interesting record, then, with the equivocal adjective not to be taken in too pejorative a sense.'