Schone Wiege meiner Leiden

Brahms, Johannes, Schumann, Clara, Schumann, Robert

Berner, Christoph, Güra, Werner

HMC 901842

Nakład wyprzedany, ostatnie 2 egzemplarze The three-way constellation Johannes Brahms - Clara Schumann - Robert Schumann contained all the ingredients necessary for the romantic exaggeration of an artist's destiny: unfulfillable love, struggle against social constraints, incompatibility of artistry and private happiness, genius and madness, illness and death, pain and loneliness. The complicated private relationships of the three musicians are reflected in their song creations. Robert Schumann's enthusiasm for the song eventually infected Clara, who had initially written only piano music. Her songs are touching through their intimacy and naturalness and bear witness to their artistic independence, which ultimately makes one think more of Mendelssohn than of Schumann. For Brahms, too, the encounter with the Schumann couple was groundbreaking in the direction of Lied. In their library he became acquainted with two anthologies of German folk songs and songs and sages of past centuries. As the sum of his studies, Brahms published "49 Deutsche Volkslieder WoO 33" three years before his death. After his remarkable solo debut CD with Schubert's Schöne Müllerin, the young Munich tenor Werner Güra shows himself to be in brilliant vocal condition and in an inspired narrative mood. Especially the latter is needed in the often dialogically arranged Brahmsschen folk songs. Güra's lyrical tenor is less impressive for his unusually beautiful timbre than for the freshness and spontaneity, unmanneredness and carefreeness with which he shapes these songs. For the Schumann cycle op. 24, which is more demanding in terms of interpretation, he is still somewhat lacking in the ability to fully fathom the deep brokenness and disruption, the burrowing pain of the soul and longing for love, the emotional contrasts of sarcasm and elegy of the first-person narrator. With Christoph Berner, he is assisted by an excellent pianist who effectively brings out the great wealth of forms in the Liederkreis. • Kurt Malisch

CD x 1

Harmonia Mundi

9/13/04

794881752522