Schubert: The Songmakers’ Almanac Schubertiade
Published:
COMPOSERS: Schubert
LABELS: Hyperion Dyad
WORKS: The Songmakers’ Almanac Schubertiade
PERFORMER: Felicity Lott, Ann Murray, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Richard Jackson, Graham Johnson (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: CDD 22010 AAD 1984
Not one Schubertiade, but four, each loosely arranged around a theme. Some of Schubert’s most famous songs are here, alongside such less familiar items as Schlegel’s indolent ‘Der Schiffer’, the haunting duet between Goethe’s Mignon and the Harper, the melodrama ‘Abschied von der Erde’, and a mildly risqué trio about a betrothed pair of poachers and a lecherous gamekeeper (this last piece improbably tossed off while Schubert was working on Winterreise…). Impossible to imagine anyone not deriving enormous pleasure from this collection. Misha Donat