One of the best of modern singers, Cheryl Studer is also proving herself to be among the most adventurous. As a lyric soprano with the capability of working in the lyric-dramatic repertoire, she demonstrated her accomplishments as a coloratura in a remarkable record published last year (EMI (CD) CDC7 49961-2, 9/90), and now, as an artist whose career has centred on the opera house, she shows how well she can do in song. Not that she is in any sense a novice, for she won the Schubert Institution's prize in Vienna and counts Hotter and Seefried among her teachers. In this recital she also benefits from having one of the most experienced and interesting of accompanists in Irwin Gage. Her programme is well-chosen and thoughtfully constructed, following its theme of nature in its relationship with human emotions, and including a number of relatively little-known songs along with some of the more familiar.
A beautiful voice is a somewhat undervalued asset in Lieder singing, and Studer's fresh radiance of tone is particularly welcome in these songs of spring and youthful affection. In one sequence of three (Am See, Die Vogel and Die Gebusche) the sheer quality of sound is often ravishing. With it, in these instances, goes a feeling for rhythm and the lightening of notes and in Die Gebusche especially one feels that both artists have been newly touched by the beauty of the song. Das Lied im Grunen has its boyish enthusiasm well caught, and Im Fruhling has a cool regretfulness about it, reminding the listener that it is a song about past happiness rather than present.
Beyond this there comes a point where the singer's art has still to deepen. Studer would not necessarily want to sing Wehmut with a concentration and intensity comparable to Schwarzkopf's (she may see it as a song of milder seriousness, and to this she is certainly not insensitive). But, taking up as chance examples Ganymed and Auf dem Wasser zu singen, both included in a Schubert recital by Elly Ameling recorded in 1984 (Philips 416 294-2PH, 8/87), one hears in the first song a more affectionate expressiveness in the earlier record, and in the second song a more vivid—and vividly smiling—narrative style. In the long and dramatic Klage des Ceres, Gundula Janowitz, in an earlier recording with Irwin Gage (DG, 11/78—nla), smiled the happy opening of the song, where Studer is relatively formal, almost severe. Still, there is much she does extremely well, and the balance with piano is preferable. In all, an impressive extension of what we know of this excellent singer through her records.'