With all due respect to the very intelligent thoughts posted by the previous reviewer, I must disagree a bit. I would invite anyone to actually pick a song from this recording and compare it with pretty much any other version remembering that, yes, the cycle really was written for a tenor and I daresay that Schubert had that sound in mind. I think that you will find it significantly less “mannered” that pretty much anything else out there. Bostridge takes it fairly straight, with minimal (if any) operatic moments, no unnecessary slides or excessive bravado, and no bellowing. There are enough recordings of crooners and singers who believe that Schubert should be the German equivalent of Verdi. Yes, Bostridge is more restrained than most, but I believe the interpretation is quite valid and certainly effective here.
The previous reviewer mentioned a lot of big moments. I would take Ständchen as a better example, as it contains a good range of both pitch and dynamic. Bostridge’s tone is warm and inviting (as it should be for the text), doesn’t hold back when the moment calls for it, but also doesn’t jump to forte just because the notes go up the scale. It’s smart, not to mention incredibly beautiful. And you’d be hard pressed to find a German who seems to obviously chew and love the language like Bostridge does.I’m not sure how it all would hold up in a recital hall (the piano is, as the previous reviewer notes, pretty restrained – delightfully so, in my opinion), but on a recording it creates some pretty magic moments. I’ll admit I generally like most of Bostridge’s recordings, but this one in particular stands out to me as being notably better than most others in a crowded list of Schwanengesang performers.
‘Schwanengesang,’ The Final Songs Of Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert‘s final, painful days in November 1828 included bouts of delirium, requests for novels by James Fennimore Cooper, ceaseless singing and snatches of lucidity, when he actually worked on music.
Schubert had been seriously ill for about three years, but it’s impossible to tell in the quantity and consistency of his compositions. In just his final 14 weeks, he wrote his last three piano sonatas (among his most transcendent), the heart-melting C-Major String Quintet, Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock) and the 14 songs that came to be grouped — by his publisher — under the titleSchwanengesang, a “Swansong” of sorts from a man who had written more than 600 songs in a truncated, 31-year life.
These final songs traverse myriad emotions. The lighthearted “Liebesbotschaft” (message of love), with its rippling accompaniment, addresses a murmuring brook with the hope of true love. The bone-chilling “Der Doppelgänger,” with its stark, slowly tolling chords, finds the protagonist crazed with a nocturnal vision of himself agonizing at the empty doorstep of his lost love.
Ian Bostridge, Antonio Pappano – Schubert “Schwanengesang”
Following their highly acclaimed Hugo Wolf lieder album, Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano have renewed their musical partnership with a recording of Franz Schubert’s Schwanengesang, the third and last of the composers song cycles, and literally his swan song, as he succumbed to illness shortly after its completion in 1828. In addition to Schwanengesang, the CD also includes Schubert songs Abschied (D475); Geheimnis (D250); An Schwager Kronos (D369) and Widerschein (D639).
Franz Schubert (Wikipedia)
Appreciation of his music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death.
.. In 1814, Schubert met a young soprano named Therese Grob, daughter of a local silk manufacturer, and wrote several of his liturgical works (including a “Salve Regina” and a “Tantum Ergo”) for her; she also was a soloist in the premiere of his Mass No. 1 (D. 105) in September[15] 1814.[14] Schubert wanted to marry her, but was hindered by the harsh marriage-consent law of 1815[16] requiring an aspiring bridegroom to show he had the means to support a family.[17]
.. Schubert and four of his friends were arrested by the Austrian police, who (in the aftermath of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars) were on their guard against revolutionary activities and suspicious of any gathering of youth or students. One of Schubert’s friends, Johann Senn, was put on trial, imprisoned for over a year, and then permanently forbidden to enter Vienna. The other four, including Schubert, were “severely reprimanded”, in part for “inveighing against [officials] with insulting and opprobrious language”.[34]
.. He was nicknamed “Schwammerl” by his friends, which Gibbs describes as translating to “Tubby” or “Little Mushroom”. Schubert, at 1.52 m height, was not quite five feet tall. “Schwamm” is Austrian (and other) dialect for mushroom; the ending “-erl” makes it a diminutive.
.. The New York Times music critic, Anthony Tommasini, who ranked Schubert as the fourth greatest composer, wrote of him:
You have to love the guy, who died at 31, ill, impoverished and neglected except by a circle of friends who were in awe of his genius.