Dorothy Dorow has already recorded Webern's songs with piano accompaniment for Etcetera/Harmonia Mundi ((CD) KTC2008, 12/88), and MEO's response to those performances—at their best ''intimate and subtle'' but tending to become ''shrill above quite a modest dynamic level''—is likely to be shared by listeners to Dorow's new Webern compilation, of works for soprano and ensemble. These miniatures—the longest barely two and a half minutes, the shortest a fleeting 24 seconds—employ a great variety of texts, ranging from rapt evocations of nature (Kraus and Trakl) to sacred verses of comparable intensity (some from Des Knaben Wunderhorn).
Webern's music makes extreme demands on all performers, but especially on the singer, with huge leaps between high and low registers and constantly shifting dynamics. On Boulez's CBS set on LP (nla) both Heather Harper and Halina Lukomska aim for smoothness of line at the expense of close fidelity to the composer's dynamic shadings, and the result—especially in Harper's account of Op. 13—is serenely expressive. But is it what Webern wanted? Dorothy Dorow makes every effort to take his highly detailed notation seriously, and her great technical resourcefulness means, for example, that in Op. 15 No. 1 we really do get a high C sharp sung ppp. Yet the effort takes its toll; phrases shiver into fragments, there are many squally sounds, and Dorow is not helped by a rather fierce recording.
A singer with a lighter voice, if she could match Dorow's accuracy and variety and not lapse into the kind of deadpan expressive neutrality of Lukomska's performances for Boulez, would probably achieve a better sense of style in this music, holding the dramatic and the lyric in a more appropriate balance. Yet this disc, despite its imperfections, is still worth having. It also includes some nicely shaped choral items, as well as the Three Pieces for string quartet (No. 2 with voice), of which Nos. 1 and 3 were later used to frame the set of Six Bagatelles, Op. 9.'