Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin
Samuel Hasselhorn (baritone), Ammiel Bushakevitz (piano)
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902720 68:31 mins
This is the first recording in a Harmonia Mundi project with the young German baritone Samuel Hasselhorn and Ammiel Bushakevitz, the South African-Israeli pianist intending to record Schubert’s songs 200 years after their composition from now until 2028. The cycle opens well enough: the brook bubbles its way through the piano part in the first songs, spirits are high, there’s the proper note of hope. By the time we glimpse the mill it’s clear that Hasselhorn belongs to that current school of German baritones for whom expressivity is paramount. Words are carefully coloured in ‘Am Feierabend’, and falsetto used sparingly for effect. But almost a third of the way through the cycle it is evident that Hasselhorn mistakes intimacy – soft singing if you will – for a kind of crooning. And then abandoning the legato that should guide each song he opens up the voice almost hectoring his listener. Both ‘Mein!’ and ‘Pause’ fall victim to this approach. And ‘Die böse Farbe’ is deeply uncomfortable despite Bushakevitz’s careful pianism – how unsettling that all that one remembers of this song is the horns calls in the piano part!
That it might all have been different is revealed in ‘Des Baches Wiegenlied’, the final song of the cycle. Pianist and vocalist are at one as the brook cradles a young man who has not loved well or wisely; a Schubertian wanderer. And the brief piano postlude is perfectly poised. Christopher Cook