Description
SKU/Barcode: 881488904550
Felix Mendelssohn wrote quite a few songs, but recordings of them in a period style have been sparse or nonexistent. This release from the respected Profil label in Germany works to remedy that lack, with a charming chamber-sized performance touching on songs from various periods of Mendelssohn's career, although the best-known ones of all, like Neue Liebe, Op. 19/4, are omitted. The Op. 8 songs, written when Mendelssohn was 18, are lighthearted and immensely appealing. Mendelssohn apparently had misgivings about at least Jetzt kommt der Fr hling, Op. 8/6 (Now Spring Is Coming, track 7), later in his career, but the popularity of the song, which is in a light Swabian dialect, seems justified from the modern hearer's point of view. The two Goethe songs could pass for little-known Schubert and appear untouched by the simple, folk-like settings that Goethe himself favored. The Hexenlied, Op, 8/8 (track 2) is a worthy counterpart to Schubert's Erlk nig, which Mendelssohn may not have known. Especially interesting are settings of poems by Carl Klingemann, a close friend of Mendelssohn's and a writer to whom he turned at several points in his song composition career. Try the charming lullaby Bei der Wiege, Op. 47, No. 6 (Beside the Cradle), which avoids the conventions of the genre and is in every way a winning bit of simplicity. Both soprano Gudrun Sidonie Otto and fortepinaist Wolfgang Brunner capture the small, salon scale of these songs sensitively; Otto uses a reedy, bright vocal timbre that highlights the music's humorous aspects, and the ca.-1815 Viennese fortepiano played by Brunner, by the builder Franz M nzenberger, will be of interest to keyboard specialists in itself with its gentle tone generated by leather-covered hammers. The sound, recorded at the small modern Ode on auditorium in Salzburg, is entirely in tune with the recording's aims. But the booklet is less successful, with rather sketchy treatment of the program. It is in German and English, but no song texts are provided at all, not even online; the recording will be most useful and enjoyable for speakers of German.
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