When you think "Schubert Serenade," isn't this the one -- "one of the most beloved of melodies" -- you're thinking of? (Part 1)

"This is probably the most famous serenade in the world, but the cost of such fame to the music has been high. It has become so hackneyed, and such a symbol of Schubert in his Lilac Time incarnation, that one must always make a constant effort to hear it with fresh ears."

-- Graham Johnson, in his booklet commentary on
the "Ständchen" from Schubert's Schwanengesang

According to Vladimir Horowitz: "This is one of the finest of all Liszt's arrangements of Schubert songs. At first deceptively simple, this transcription of one of the most beloved of melodies demands more and more pianistic control over balance, dynamics and color until, in the last variation, the pianist is required to create the illusion that he has three hands playing three separate dynamic levels and individual colors: the melody, a canonic echo of the melody, and the accompaniment. The effect can be sheer magic, transcending what is ordinarily expected of the instrument. This is one of my favorite Schubert-Liszt transcriptions."

-- liner note for V.H.'s DG recording (edited by Thomas Frost)
[hold on, we are going to hear it -- wait just a moment!]

This, as reimagined by Franz Liszt, is the "Schubert Serenade"
we've been hearing -- to Liszt, the "Ständchen von Shakespeare"


Setrak, piano. EMI France, released 1975

Yevgeny Kissin (age 19), piano. DG, recorded in Bavaria-Studio, Munich, December 1990

And this is Liszt's reimagining (the arrangement that Horowitz
was talking about) of the more famous "Schubert Serenade"


Setrak, piano. EMI France, released 1975

Vladimir Horowitz, piano. DG, from Horowitz at Home, recorded in New York City, 1986-89

by Ken

Maybe we ought to start by hearing the actual songs, and since through our pursuit of musical larks Fritz Wunderlich has been our lark-lucky tenor charm, we're going to lead off with him. But first let's clear away some peripheral business:

(1) To be clear, the picture of Vladimir Horowitz is not directly connected to the performance of the Schubert-Liszt Schwanengesang "Ständchen." I mention this because, as noted, the "Ständchen" is from a record called Horowitz at Home, and the picture quite clearly is not Horowitz at home, but in a studio -- it's from a record called Vladimir Horowitz: The Studio Recordings - New York 1985, so it's from the right period (the At Home recordings were made in 1986, 1988, and 1989), and it shows him playing, whereas the picture officially connected to Horowitz at Home has him standing merrily in the curve of the piano.

(2) I'm sorry I don't know much more than the scraps I've been able to glean online about Setrak, a Lebanese-born pianist who for at least awhile seems to have been known just by the one name. More properly, he was Setrak A. (for Antoine) Setrakian (1938-2013). I'm sorry to say that he's really known to me almost entirely for the c1975 French EMI LP of Liszt piano arrangements of Schubert songs from which we heard two samples, which I think you'll agree offer some quite lovely piano-playing.


NOW BACK TO BUSINESS -- AND FRITZ W.

I guess we should recap, for those who have forgotten or weren't here to being with, that somehow or other (probably it'll come to me if I think really hard) we wound up chasing musical larks -- specifically the depictions by Haydn (in the opening movement of his String Quartet, Op. 64, No. 5, inescapably known, in consequence, as The Lark), Otto Nicolai (the poor, love-besotted young Fenton offering a potentially heart-stopping morning serenade to his hopelessly beloved Anne Reich in Act II of The Merry Wives of Windsor, a setting in German translation of Shakespeare's "Hark, hark, the lark" from Act II of Cymbeline), and Ralph Vaughan Williams's fantasy for violin and orchestra The Lark Ascending.

That made for a lot of ground to cover -- or re-cover from an ancient post I'd done highlighting those three musicalized larks -- and the territory grew exponentially larger when it occurred to me to toss in another setting in another German translation of "Hark, hark, the lark," Schubert's "Ständchen" (i.e., serenade), "Horch, horch, die Lerch' im Äthenblau," D. 889.Naturally, when it comes to Schubert songs, this involved dipping into Hyperion's Schubert Edition, the astonishing 37-volume compendium of all of Schubert's solo and part-songs masterminded by Graham Johnson, who not only figured out how to get all of this material onto records, enlisting a sizable batallion of singers, but provided first-class musical supervision from the keyboard (as I always try to remember to point out, Graham is one of the truly great song accompanists I've heard), and produced a mind-boggling richness of incredibly diverse and absorbing commentaries, which had to be gathered into book form, not as "a" book but as a three-volume encyclopedia.


CONSULTING GRAHAM ON SCHUBERT'S "HORCH, HORCH" . . .

. . . a song I enjoy but haven't exactly esteemed, I discovered, as you may recall, that he esteems it a lot, in its particular way. And I knew I wanted in some form to share at least some of his insights.

Before I could figure out how exactly to do that, I once again expanded my thinking. I already knew that I wanted to take the occasion to take a peek at the song that I'm guessing most music-lovers think of when they think of the words "Schubert serenade," the "Ständchen" that's part of the song collection, presumably intended to pair settings groups of settings of poems by Ludwig Rellstab and Heinrich Heine, which remained incomplete at the time of his death, and was published posthumously as Schwanengeang, or Swan Song.

I still haven't figured out how to do this, even after typing out the whole of the individual-song commentary (each volume of the series also contains essays on an array of subjects inspired by the particular volume's contents) for the Schwanengesang "Ständchen." I thought, though, that while I contiue to try to figure out how to do this, we might at least start by hearing the basic material.

And I thought that, before moving forward, we might want to move backward and rehear Nicolai's "Hark, hark" setting, the Romanze that critic-musicologist Martin Cooper described aptly -- and interestingly for our purposes -- as "Schubertian," in the performance from German EMI's still-highly-worthy 1963 complete Merry Wives, conducted by the canny veteran Robert Heber, in which Wunderlich sang Fenton (opposite the young Edith Mathis as Anne).

NICOLAI: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II, Scene 2: romance, Fenton, "Horch', die Lerche singt im Hain" ("Hark, the lark sings in the grove")

FENTON: Hark, the lark sings in the grove,
listen, listen, sweetheart, quietly, &c.
Gently open your little window,
hear, hear, what she wishes &c.
The song's tune is clear,
anyone who loves will understand it easily, &c.

Hear how the mild sound,
sweetheart, lifts itself up to you.
Don't ask what the song,
dear one, so feelingfully strives for &c. . .
The song's tune is clear,
anyone who loves will understand it readily, &c.

-- stanza 1: German text by Ferdinand Mayerhofer, from Shakespeare; stanza 2: text by librettist Hermann Mosenthal

Fritz Wunderlich (t), Fenton; Bavarian State Orchestra, Robert Heger, cond. EMI, recorded in the Bürgerbräu, Munich, Feb. 27-Mar. 1, 1963


MOVING ON TO SCHUBERT'S "HARK, HARK"

With both serenades we're going to hear first Fritz W. and then: (a) a performance from Team Graham Johnson and (b) one from Team Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore (one of many, many, many). in the "Hark, hark, the lark" settings of Nicolai (Fenton's gorgeous morning serenade to his beloved Anne Reich in Act II of The Merry Wives of Windsor) and Schubert, we're going to have him lead off here, followed (doubly so in the case of "Leise flehen" by Team Fischer-Dieskau-and-Moore and Team Graham Johnson, preceded by a shockingly chopped down version of Graham's commentary in Vol. 26 of the Hyperion Schubert Edition. He begins by setting the scene in Cymbeline, up to the place where Shakespeare places "Hark, hark" -- including a "double entendre of the bawdiest kind," having to do with musically penetrating a woman, "with your fingering" and "with tongue too."

The song was written, he tells us, in --

a period which finds Schubert composing not very prolifically, but like a god. How effortless this all seems, this tender serenade with the chirruping of the lark evoked by a delicate semiquaver motif which also brings to mind tiny elfin trumpets announcing the dawning of a new day. These piano figurations seem as delicate as dew drops on a delicate summer morning. . . . . The song as the composer intended it (without the two extra verses added by Friedrich Reil for the second Diabelli edition of 1835) is over in a trice, as transitory as the best British weather.

The song is in C major, but we hear the tonic chord in root position only rarely. So much of it is written over a dominant pedal that the listener seems suspended in that dream world, half-sleeping and half-waking in which Isabel [in Cymbeline; Graham has carefully set up the situation in which "Hark, hark" is set in the play] finds herself. . . . . [The] distant tonality [of A-flat major] draw[s] us into the secret world of flowers. . . . . As the serenade progresses it gathers momentum and heat with the rising of the sun. delicate pleas give way to an outburst of energy where the invitation to rise becomes a command. . . . . The return of the prelude as postlude restores the decorum and the sense of musicians gently tapping on the window to rouse the stay-abed. . . . . [T]his is a masterpiece of economy and delight.

ⓒ1996 by Graham Johnson

SCHUBERT: "Ständchen" ("Serenade"), "Horch, horch, die Lerch' im Ätherblau" ("Hark, hark, the lark in the blue ether"), D. 889

"Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
and Phoebus 'gins arise,
his steeds to water at those springs
on chaliced flowers that lies;
and winking Mary-buds begin
to ope their golden eyes:
with every thing that pretty is,
my lady sweet, arise:
arise, arise!"

-- Cloten's song from Cymbeline, Act II, Scene 3 (German translation of Shakespeare by August Wilhelm von Schlegel)

[edited down to Schubert's single stanza] Fritz Wunderlich, tenor; Rolf Reinhardt, piano. Opera (Deutsche Schallplatten-Gemeinschaft)-EMI, recorded 1962

Christine Schäfer, soprano; Graham Johnson, piano. From Vol. 26 of the Hyperion Schubert Edition, "An 1826 Schubertiad," recorded 1994-96

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Gerald Moore, piano. DG, recorded in UFA-Ton-Studio, Berlin, Feb.-Mar. 1969

One last thought: It's easy enough to understand the impulse of poor Friedrich Reil in tacking on two extra strophes to "Horch, horch, die Lerch'," in the interest of both performers and audiences. Otherwise the song is over almost before it has started. We can marvel with Graham J. at the breathtaking concision of the song in the form Schubert gave it, but a minute-and-a-half is still a minute-and-a-half. How much preparation and concentration is called for, again from both performers and audiences, to properly appreciate a minute-and-a-half miracle? Of course this is part of the deal with music like this. I just think it's worth a moment's thought.


AT LAST: THE SCHWANENGESANG "STÄNDCHEN"!

Okay, I think we've got a plan, which is to finish up what will be Part 1 of this post with our intended performances:

• the Wunderlich;

• from Team Fischer-Dieskau & Moore: not one but two performances, nearly 14 years apart -- I couldn't choose between them (spoiler alert: eventually we're going to hear still earlier and later Fischer-Dieskau performances, with other pianists);

• and from Team Graham Johnson, also not one but two performances -- in addition to the Hyperion Schubert Edition performance with tenor John Mark Ainsley, a later live performance with baritone Christopher Maltman.

At that point we'll call a pause on a post that's threatening to stretch on into infinity. When we resume -- and believe it or not, the rest is actually ready -- in addition to hearing a further assortment of perforances of the "Ständchen," we're going to have Graham J. guide us through three chunks of "Leise flehen," which will cover a good part of the song.

SCHUBERT: "Ständchen" ("Serenade"): "Leise flehen meine Lieder" ("Softly my songs implore"), No. 4 from Schwanengesang (Swan Song), D. 957

Fritz Wunderlich, tenor; Hubert Giesen, piano. DG, recorded in the Hochschule für Musik, Munich, November 1965

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Gerald Moore, piano. EMI, recorded in the Gemeindehaus, Berlin-Zehlendorf, May 23-24, 1958

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Gerald Moore, piano. DG, recorded in UFA-Ton-Studio, Berlin, March 1972

John Mark Ainsley, tenor; Graham Johnson, piano. From Vol. 37 of the Hyperion Schubert Edition, "The Final Year," recorded 1998-99

Christopher Maltman, baritone; Graham Johnson, piano. Wigmore Hall Live, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, Apr. 20, 2010


PART 2 OF THE POST IS SCHEDULED TO PUBLISH AT 1pm ET

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