BaL 2.06.12 - Wolf's Spanish Songbook

**gurnemanz** · 25-05-12, 10:47

My first reaction to that list is to ask myself exactly how this survey will be conducted since they are all, as you point out, selections from the 44 songs - 24 for the female voice and 20 for the male. I assume they will arrive at a recommendation for a selection disc (one male, one female?) and a complete recording, of which there are to my knowledge not very many currently available (possibly only one). This is the only one which I have as a complete set - with Anne Sofie von Otter/Olaf Bär + Geoffrey Parsons - which is a classic and I have in two forms: the EMI twofer, now seemingly only available as a download, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wolf-Spanisc.../dp/B001I4IHDY. It's not on your list, but you can still get it in the excellent anniversary box which most Wolf lovers will certainly already have: http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/EMI/6886082

It is very disappointing that the other obvious complete recommendation with the late-lamented Fischer-Dieskau + Schwarzkopf and Gerald Moore is apparently now out of print: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wolf-Spanish...7938160&sr=8-1 although many of the individual songs are available spread over separate selection discs.

PS I am deeply impressed that you were awake and alert at 6.20 a.m. to take the trouble to post this list.

**Eine Alpensinfonie** · 25-05-12, 12:37

Originally posted by gurnemanz View Post

PS I am deeply impressed that you were awake and alert at 6.20 a.m. to take the trouble to post this list.

I go to bed on Thursday night, wondering what BaL work will be announced on Friday morning on the BBC website. I then dream about it. Sometimes the dream comes true. But at other times, we end up with an indistinct topic, or a composer's complete works.
But this was quite different - a work of which there are hardly any complete recordings.

**verismissimo** · 25-05-12, 17:43

For me this is one of the very greatest of song cycles. The ten sacred songs that open it are profoundly moving. The remainder, all secular, are far distant from typical German Romanticism in their use of irony, even slyness, on the subject of love.

I've been listening today to Schwarzkopf/DFD/Moore and can't imagine anything could be finer.

Over the weekend I'll go on to von Otter/Bar/Parsons, so who knows...

Then I'll go back to Gerhardt, Trianti, Husch, Rethberg etc in the Wolf Society box from the 1930s.

**BBMmk2** · 26-05-12, 12:18

Is there much point of Radio 3 to do a BaL of incomplete recordings?

**verismissimo** · 31-05-12, 19:41

It seems that Wolf has few followers on these boards - and ditto among the wider music-loving community.

It wasn't always so.

In fact, the reputations of Wolf and Mahler (born the same year, they shared a room as students in Vienna) have reversed over the past half century or so.

If I had to choose between them, I'd have Wolf.

Am I alone?

**Beef Oven** · 31-05-12, 19:42

Originally posted by verismissimo View Post

It seems that Wolf has few followers on these boards - and ditto among the wider music-loving community.

It wasn't always so.

In fact, the reputations of Wolf and Mahler (born the same year, they shared a room as students in Vienna) have reversed over the past half century or so.

If I had to choose between them, I'd have Wolf.

Am I alone?

yes

**amateur51** · 31-05-12, 20:42

Originally posted by Brassbandmaestro View Post

Is there much point of Radio 3 to do a BaL of incomplete recordings?

Well if they're all that is available at present, I guess that it has to be so.

I know very little of this work and I look forward to a BaL tutorial from Hilary Finch to inspire and inform me.

**gurnemanz** · 31-05-12, 22:52

I have been hooked on Wolf ever since I borrowed a double LP of F-D and Moore doing Goethe settings from the library about 40 years ago. He's so inventive and witty - the piano is always doing something interesting. I snapped up the spell-binding Wolf Society Walter Legge inspired recordings from the 30s on LP then CD which include Helge Rosvaenge's extraordinary Feuerreiter:

Helge Rosvaenge - Wolf: Der Feuerreiter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8b8rpdgZ0s

Now I have posted Fassbaender, I must post Rosvaenge!Gerald Moore on the Piano. An incredibly modern performance, the recording date is 1938(!)The legendary ...

Moore recounts in his memoirs how he found Rosvaenge's first take a bit tame and gave him some whisky to loosen him up.

**gurnemanz** · 01-06-12, 10:51

Originally posted by verismissimo View Post

It seems that Wolf has few followers on these boards - and ditto among the wider music-loving community.

It wasn't always so.

In fact, the reputations of Wolf and Mahler (born the same year, they shared a room as students in Vienna) have reversed over the past half century or so.

If I had to choose between them, I'd have Wolf.

Am I alone?

I've never confronted myself with that choice but in respect of song-writing I might well follow your preference for the sheer variety of Wolf's output.

This must be the lowest response level to any BAL thread - 9 so far and the programme is tomorrow. (As a barmy Wolf fan, I am just doing my bit by boosting him into double figures and keeping him near the top.)

It will be surprising if the recently deceased Fischer-Dieskau doesn't get a recommendation.

**amateur51** · 01-06-12, 11:08

Originally posted by gurnemanz View Post

I have been hooked on Wolf ever since I borrowed a double LP of F-D and Moore doing Goethe settings from the library about 40 years ago. He's so inventive and witty - the piano is always doing something interesting. I snapped up the spell-binding Wolf Society Walter Legge inspired recordings from the 30s on LP then CD which include Helge Rosvaenge's extraordinary Feuerreiter:

Helge Rosvaenge - Wolf: Der Feuerreiter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8b8rpdgZ0s

Now I have posted Fassbaender, I must post Rosvaenge!Gerald Moore on the Piano. An incredibly modern performance, the recording date is 1938(!)The legendary ...

Moore recounts in his memoirs how he found Rosvaenge's first take a bit tame and gave him some whisky to loosen him up.

Blimey! -how marvellous!

Many thanks for this gurnemanz!

**aeolium** · 01-06-12, 11:11

If it was a survey of Wolf songs on disc, rather than focussing on the Spanish Songbook, I think the famous Furtwängler/Schwarzkopf recital would have to come into the picture (IIRC it only has a couple of songs from the Spanish Songbook). I would like to hear della Casa or Seefried in these songs.

**verismissimo** · 01-06-12, 19:26

I've finally got around to listening again to the Spanish Songbook songs in the Hugo Wolf Society set.

The whole project was the idea of the then Sunday Times critic, Ernest Newman, and the records were sold on a subscription basis. The actual recordings, on 78s initially of course, were made under the aegis of Fred Gaisberg and then Walter Legge between 1931 and 1938. They signed up the finest singers of the lied of that generation.

A problem in listening to the Spanish songs within the set is that they are spread out through the whole project - a couple here and a couple there. Twenty three songs from the cycle in total out of the forty four.

And there are eight different singers involved, with Elena Gerhardt the first. For me this represented a barrier for a long time. Truth told, I think her reputation between the wars as the premier singer of German songs was quite unjustified, and, in these Spanish songs, she lacks humour, lightness, playfulness. To my ears she's far too heavy and ernst.

But the remaining seven singers are absolutely outstanding, with excellent accompanists and fine recordings. They are: Alexandra Trianti, Elisabeth Rethberg, Gerhard Huesch, Ria Ginster, Karl Erb, Herbert Janssen and Marta Fuchs.

The songs range from the witty to the sly to the profound.

Do try this set if you can find it, but maybe start your listening after Gerhardt!

**LeMartinPecheur** · 01-06-12, 21:40

Originally posted by verismissimo View Post

I've finally got around to listening again to the Spanish Songbook songs in the Hugo Wolf Society set.

The whole project was the idea of the then Sunday Times critic, Ernest Newman, and the records were sold on a subscription basis. The actual recordings, on 78s initially of course, were made under the aegis of Fred Gaisberg and then Walter Legge between 1931 and 1938. They signed up the finest singers of the lied of that generation.

A problem in listening to the Spanish songs within the set is that they are spread out through the whole project - a couple here and a couple there. Twenty three songs from the cycle in total out of the forty four.

And there are eight different singers involved, with Elena Gerhardt the first. For me this represented a barrier for a long time. Truth told, I think her reputation between the wars as the premier singer of German songs was quite unjustified, and, in these Spanish songs, she lacks humour, lightness, playfulness. To my ears she's far too heavy and ernst.

But the remaining seven singers are absolutely outstanding, with excellent accompanists and fine recordings. They are: Alexandra Trianti, Elisabeth Rethberg, Gerhard Huesch, Ria Ginster, Karl Erb, Herbert Janssen and Marta Fuchs.

The songs range from the witty to the sly to the profound.

Do try this set if you can find it, but maybe start your listening after Gerhardt!

Gerhardt IMO shows up as a lieder singer much better in her acoustic recordings 1907-11 with Arthur Nikisch which I have on EMI Treasury HLM 1436041. Three Wolfs but nothing from the Spanish Songbook unfortunately. She'd definitely got slower and soggier by the time of the Hogo Wol Soc recordings!

**ferneyhoughgeliebte** · 02-06-12, 11:00

Originally posted by verismissimo View Post

It seems that Wolf has few followers on these boards - and ditto among the wider music-loving community.
It wasn't always so.
In fact, the reputations of Wolf and Mahler (born the same year, they shared a room as students in Vienna) have reversed over the past half century or so.
If I had to choose between them, I'd have Wolf.
Am I alone?

Looks like it on these 'Boards at least, veri!

I've always felt that I should enjoy (or even just "appreciate") Wolf more than I do. I think my problem is that he communicates such intense feelings in such a short time - just as I'm getting into the mood of a song, it stops and another, quite different in tempreament, begins. (I have the same problem with Mahler's Knaben Wunderhorn, for what it's worth!) With the Mahler Symphonies, the emotional environment has more time and space to arrive, settle and move on again. With Webern, the gnomic utterences of the early works is more fleeting still than Wolf's, but that very brevity creates a caress of sound that "lingers" longer with me than Wolf's.

Then again, it may come down to performances. The ones that are usually recommended (as this morning) always sound - and I do apologize to everyone for whom these performances are balm to the soul - "hammy" and/or "AmDram" (yes, even my belovéd DF-D here - though I can imagine these performances "ringing" in a Recital Hall, in my small Music Room, they're too "declamatory"). I think I might go for the Bär & von Otter disc, or the Orchestral versions on CAPRICCIO.

In any case, I'm grateful for this BaL (and for verissimo's comments) in re-awakening my curiosity about this composer.

Best Wishes.

BaL 2.06.12 - Wolf's Spanish Songbook

BaL 2.06.12 - Wolf's Spanish Songbook

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