Live in Concert: Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin 28.01.14

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Live in Concert 28.02.14 at 7.30 p.m.

Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin sung by rising Swiss tenor Mauro Peter with pianist Helmut Deutsch, live from London's Wigmore Hall

Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin, D.795

Mauro Peter (tenor)
Helmut Deutsch (piano)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I first heard this work on my uncle's 2 LP set with DFD and Gerald Moore. An extravagant layout even then. Do forumites prefer the tenor or the baritone voice in this?

[gurnemanz]

I first heard this work on my uncle's 2 LP set with DFD and Gerald Moore. An extravagant layout even then. Do forumites prefer the tenor or the baritone voice in this?

FD/Moore on HMV was one of my first classical LPs in glorious mono but definitely only one LP - I've still got it. Maybe your uncle had a double with other songs. As a student I had no record player in my room and had to creep down to the common room during slack periods to play it. I've since acquired quite a few recordings and could probably sing it by heart - an unusual party piece. I think I prefer tenor - Schreier, Patzak, Schiøtz, Güra, Gedda, Pears/Britten and most recently the phenomenal Jonas Kaufmann with tonight's accompanist Helmut Deutsch.

[Thropplenoggin]

For a baritone I favour Florian Boesch (from Monday's overwhelming recital on Monday lunchtime) who has recorded this with Malcolm Martineau (Onyx); it made Disc of the Week on CD Review recently: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schubert-Die...chone+mullerin

Christoph Prégardien is my preferred choice for a tenor voice accompanied by Michael Gees.

[Richard Tarleton]

Tenor for me - though this could be partly down to hearing it for the first time live, performed by the great Peter Schreier (with Geoffrey Parsons). The plangent tone he brings to it perfectly expresses the miller's personality as it comes across in the poems. I have the Schreier/Schiff CD.

[Don Petter]

FD/Moore on HMV was one of my first classical LPs in glorious mono but definitely only one LP - I've still got it. Maybe your uncle had a double with other songs.

The DFD/GM performance which appeared (with nothing extra, in 1953) on the 2 LP set ALP1036/7 was recorded in 1952 and originally issued on 78s.

I presume gurnemanz's LP is ALP1913 which was a new recording (for stereo, as so many at that time) from 1962, also issued in parallel as ASD481.

Alec Robertson, in his review of the later issue in The Gramophone, finds many improvements but in no way discounts the earlier one:

'Both performances leave me with the sense of the immortal and inexhaustible beauty of the glorious work, and awake infinite gratitude. What can be said without qualification, is the superiority, mono and stereo, of HMV's remarkable recording.'

[Thropplenoggin]

I can't say I'm warming to this tenor's voice...not at all.

[Flosshilde]

Do forumites prefer the tenor or the baritone voice in this?

I can't say that i have a preference, as it's a work I can't say I've heard, or only fragments (although the opening song sounds very familiar), but as the miller is supposed to be a young man, wouldn't tenor be most suitable, being a lighter, perhaps more youthfull, voice?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

That does make an assumption that young men are tenors and old men are basses. Me - I was a bass at 16, but at 64' I sing tenor.

But returning to topic, I prefer the baritone in this work. Tonight's performance has not changed my mind.

[Lento]

wouldn't tenor be most suitable, being a lighter, perhaps more youthfull, voice?

All things being equal, which I suppose they aren't, I have a slight preference for tenor because the piano part sounds less "rumbly" at the higher pitch in some of the lieder, to my ears.