A wonderful record. The Elegie was the first of Othmar Schoeck’s song-cycles and among his most haunting. It dates from 1922 and so comes between the operas Venus (1919-21) and Penthesilea (1923-7). Its emotional origins are to be found in the turbulent affair he had with the pianist Mary de Senger, whose course Dr Chris Walton charts in his authoritative notes. They first met when de Senger auditioned for him in 1918 and their relationship survived various quarrels, depressions and reconciliations until 1923. The previous year Schoeck had begun composing a series of songs that in time came to form the present cycle. It can be said to portray “the narrative of a dying love” and though the impulse was primarily autobiographical, his relationship with de Senger was not to disintegrate finally until after its completion and first performance. He began in the summer of 1922 by setting Eichendorff’s poem, Der Einsielder – whose title he subsequently changed to Der Einsame (“The lonely one”) – which he placed at the very end of the cycle.
The cycle comprises two dozen settings for baritone and chamber orchestra of poems by Lenau and Eichendorff. Right from the first notes the listener is drawn into Schoeck’s world and remains under his spell for the remaining hour. What imaginative miniatures these are, powerful in atmosphere, full of inventive resource and sensitive colouring. Take, for example, the third song, “Stille Sicherheit” (“Quiet certainty”), which takes one-and-a-half minutes but is so concentrated in feeling and heady in atmosphere that it conveys as much as a miniature tone-poem. The same may be said of No. 11, “Vesper”, with its evocative tolling bells and powerful scents – and practically any of the later songs in this cycle. Not only is Schoeck’s harmonic and orchestral palette subtle, but the vocal line is beautifully drawn and, it goes without saying, given the distinction of this artist, beautifully sung.
The Elegie is not yet included in Jecklin’s survey of Schoeck’s songs, which so far runs to 11 discs and the only other recording I know is a two-LP set on the same label by the bass, Arthur Loosli with a chamber orchestra under Theo Hug (Jecklin Disco – nla), which is not in the same class. This is one of the outstanding song-cycles of its period, very naturally recorded, and one of the finest vocal discs I have heard for a long time: its beauties resonate in the mind long after you have played it. I cannot recommend it too strongly.'