From the Loose Ends Dept.:Yet another Schubert serenade

TEMPORARY POST, I think (so that, with this chunk of music "ready," I can hear it in this form -- and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to too)

FRIDAY UPDATE: We've added a performance each for D. 920 and D. 921 -- featuring big-time talent: Janet Baker and Christa Ludwig

Brigitte Fassbaender (born 1939): Listen to either of her performances of the serenade "Zögernd leise" (she recorded both of Schubert's versions) and see if you don't feel you've been in the presence of a great singer.

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What we'll be doing, as best I can scope it out at present, is rehearing "the" Schubert Serenade, "Leise flehen" (you know, the one from the song collection Schubert had done so much work on without putting it in final form, published posthumously as Schwanengesang, or "Swan Song"; maybe in some performances we haven't heard?) and "the other" Schubert Serenade (the "Hark, hark, the lark" setting that got us into this whole territory) along with this utterly captivating "newcomer," of which we have these four quite different but pretty wonderful peformances (just note, in the piano introd, as dramatic and grabbing as it is brief, how differently our four pianists hear it, setting such interestingly different tones for the performances to come), and we may want to fill some of the gaps we've left from these staggeringly productive last couple of years of Schubert's life.

Example: The earliest of the three serenades, "Horch, horch, die Lerch' im Ätheblau," D. 889, was written days after he finished what would be his last string quartet, No. 15 in G major, D. 887 (though the sublime String Quintet was still to come), and especially considering the overpowering need Schubert felt near the very end -- as Graham Johnson laid it out for us -- to hear Beethoven's Op. 131 Quartet (which friends managed to arrange for him to hear, and we heard it too), which tells us so much about where his head was musically at this point, I'm thinking maybe we should hear not just the G major Quartet but its predecessor, No. 14, the Death and the Maiden Quartet (an imposing work in its own right, but still a leap behind the G major), and the String Quintet as well. Meanwhile . . . . -- Ken

SCHUBERT: Ständchen, "Zögernd leise, in des Dunkels nächt'ger Stille" ("Lingering quietly, in the dark's nighttime stillness"), 1st and 2nd versions, D. 920 and 921

1ST VERSION, ALTO SOLO WITH MEN'S VOICES, D. 920


Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano; with Capella Bavariae (Albert Gassner and Anton Rosner, tenors; Peter Schranner, baritone; Josef Weber, bass); Wolfgang Sawallisch, piano. EMI, recorded in the Bürgerbräu, Munich, Dec. 8, 1977

Sarah Walker, mezzo-soprano; with male vocal ensemble (6 tenors, 5 baritones and basses); Graham Johnson, piano. From Vol. 8 of the Hyperion Schubert Edition, recorded May 29-31, 1989

To which we're now adding another performance:

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; with men of the English Chamber Choir; Raymond Leppard, piano. Philips, released 1977

2ND VERSION, ALTO SOLO WITH WOMEN'S VOICES, D. 921


Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano; with women of the Bavarian State Opera Chorus, Munich; Erik Werba, piano. EMI, recorded in the Bürgerbräu, Munich, June 18-20, 1973

Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano; with women of the Swedish Radio Chorus; Bengt Forsberg, piano. DG, recorded in the Great Hall of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, Stockholm, May 1996

Here too we have another performance to add:

Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; with women of the ORF Chorus; Irwin Gage, piano. DG, recorded in Tonstudio Rosenhügel, Vienna, June-July 1974