Nancy Argenta gives so much of her time and energy to earlier and later music that we are only seldom treated to her Lieder. And it is a treat. Her musical sensibility is wide-awake, her responses unfettered by received wisdom, her voice warm and immediate in its engagement.
It is the lively movement of the words in a song like Gott im Fruhlinge which does away with the need to over-illustrate their setting. and it is the control of the voice's natural wide resonance which brings such a depth of blue to the last line of Nachtviolen, or such a distant, almost instrumental timbre to Nacht und Traume.
Argenta's sense of joy in what she sings rings out of Liebhaber in aller Gestalten, which is rhythmically lively enough not to need to be coy. Seligkeit, too, is never over-articulated, but finds its energy in the impetus created by long, robust breaths.
The value of the contribution of a fortepiano in performance of Schubert songs is now well rehearsed. Here its strengths are apparent in the sturdy, springing chords of Der Wanderer an den Mond and in the truly winged feet of Der Musensohn, as Melvyn Tan artfully varies the thrumming weights and measures of each group of lines. His partnership with Argenta is close and sympathetic. Her low register and his sparse, toiling notes paint a haunting lunar beauty in the ghostly Schwestergruss, and a scintillating pattern of reflected light and movement in Auf dem Wasser zu singen.
Tan is sometimes tempted to be a little rhythmically inflexible, emphasizing the rule of the barline over much, as in Die Forelle. And one does long for the broader, brighter support of the piano in both the Mignon settings and Der Hirt auf dem Felsen. I appreciated the slight pauses after the first ten songs, and before and after the Mignon group. They seemed symptomatic of a thoughtfully produced programme, sensitively and attractively performed.'