MAHLER: Lieder aus der Jugendzeit (Songs from Youth):
"Ablösung im Sommer" ("Summer Replacement")
Cuckoo has fallen to his death
on a green willow tree.
Cuckoo is dead!
Fallen to his death.
Who then for us this whole summer
will while away the time?
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Hey! Lady Nightingale must do so!
She sits on a green branch:
the small, delicate Nightingale,
the dear, sweet Nightingale!
She sings and hops, is ever happy,
even when other birds are silent.
We'll wait for Lady Nightingale,
who lives in green hedgerows.
And if the cuckoo is at an end,
then she will start to warble.
-- original text "based on" Des Knaben Wunderhorn but
mostly by Mahler, translation (mostly) by William Mann
Or click here to go to Internet Archive, then press ► to play
Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Geoffrey Parsons, piano. Hyperion, recorded in Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, London, Feb. 24-25, 1983
Or click here to go to Internet Archive, then press ► to play
Diana Damrau, soprano; Stephan Matthias Lademann, piano. Telos Music, recorded in Telos Music Studios, Mechernich-Floisdorf, Germany, May or Sept. 2003
Anny Felbermayer, soprano; Viktor Graf, piano. Vanugard, recorded in Vienna, 1952
Judith Raskin, soprano; George Schick, piano. Epic-CBS-Sony, recorded in New York City, June 1965
A NOTE ON THIS WEEK'S MUSIC (AND SOME
CONSIDERATIONS GOING FORWARD)
Happily, Internet Archive seems back to something like normal functioning, meaning that it's once again possible to draw on Sunday Classics clips that reside there. However, this post, as you may recall, was originally conceived to depend on YouTube for music, and so a fair amount of today's music is so sourced, though it's all audio-only.
A number of today's performances already existed in the SC Archive (chez Internet Archive), and I've returned to embedding clips, hoping they'll play normally. But for these selections I've also included links to their Internet Archive pages. And I've included them in a particular form: with the "Webamp" player active. I've done this for another reason. While I.A. was grounded, the team was also working on a new version of its player, which is what 's used to play the clips that are embedded here. So that even after access to the archive was restored, for a while it was necessary, even if you were listening on-site, to switch to the Webamp option in order to hear anything.
At some point the new player must have been activated, but it appears that, understandably, it wasn't designed to work on old, no-longer-supported browser versions. So anyone who's dependent on such browsers isn't going to be hearing much music. If there are any SC readers in that situation, I'd love to know about it, because this means that all those years' worth of posts are going to be music-less for you. K can at least continue going forward to provide on-site links.
by Ken
In last week's post ("Not that it takes much, but I'm in an 'Urlicht' frame of mind -- and we're going to have some other Mahler Wunderhorn songs too," Oct. 28) we listened to a pair of Mahler's great song hits, "
Urlicht" and "Father Anthony's Fish Sermon," both settings of texts drawn from the folk-song anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn" ("The Youth's Magic Horn") -- and a little wisp of a third, less consequential Wunderhorn song: the song we've just heard again in an almost confounding range of renderings, "Ablösung im Sommer." It's one of Mahler's early Wunderhorn settings, which he felt no need (or reason) to orchestrate himself, though we've already heard it with orchestra (and we have in store performances with orchestratations by several different hands).
IT'S A CHARMING, PERHAPS GOOFY
OR MAYBE EVEN WEIRD LITTLE SONG
It's a cuckoo-and-nightingale tale in which not a lot of sympathy is extended to poor Cuckoo, who sets the song in motion by right-out-of-the-box, without so much as a proper piano introduction (a mere two bars, literally dropping dead. It seems clear that the denizens of the forest have been settling for Cuckoo's admittedly not-terribly-poetic song as better than nothing, and after a moment of panic of the loss of even that contribution, no doubt is left that the prospect of Mrs. Nightingale taking over forest-song duties is an enticing one.
I'm assuming that Janet Baker, normally such a sensible singer, had an idea of an effect she thought the song might make, and so locked herself into an under-a-minute-and-a-half pace that leaves her gasping to get the words out. At the other extreme, toward or even to the two-minute mark (Mahler is no help here; as we're going to see, he offers no tempo marking, just the guide "With humor"), Anny Felbermayer and Diana Damrau seem to be singing a different song entirely, and almost a different song from each other. Felbermayer in her sweetly lyric account remains mostly chipper, almost eerily so, while Damrau, though certainly no party-pooper, uses her more modest pace, and the fuller sound she can command, to introduce a note of reflective languor, even sensuousness.
The two-minute "Ablösung" is risky, though. It can seem as if nothing much is happening, and even such a short song can begin to soound long(ish). I sort of have that feeling about this performance, for example. It's nice enough, but --
Christiane Karg, soprano; Malcolm Martineau, piano. Harmonia Mundi, recorded in Bavarian Radio Studio No. 1, Apr. 30-May 3, 2019
By way of mid-course corrective, I tacked onto the other performances above Judith Raskin's sweet and unforcedly charming account -- such an attentive, pleasing singer that it's always nice to be have occasion to remember her.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A MAN SINGS "ABLÖSUNG"?
Glad you asked! And you may not be surprised by who's up first.
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Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Karl Engel, piano. DG, recorded in Berlin, June 1959
Watch on YouTube (audio only)
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Dietrich Fischer-Diesaku, baritone; Leonard Bernstein, piano. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York City, Nov. 5-6, 1968
Not surprisingly, Fischer-Dieskau doesn't think this is a "small" song at all, and he's left us two quite differently wonderful performance. Naturally it's a treat to hear the voice in 1959 rolling out so sonorously (allowing for the transition to that tenory upper range). In 1968 he seems also responsive to the collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, who has some unusual ideas about where the piano can offer softer textures and where it remains spiky -- and we have an excellent point of comparison in Karl Engel's perfectly lovely accompaniment. Where the whole character of the song changes, as Mrs. Nightingale's contribution is anticipated and we're suddenly in the major key of A, Engel like pretty much every other pianist I've heard, hears a pearly sweetness in those slurred right-hand sixteenth-note figurations -- a really beautiful effect. Lenny, however, hears a distinct note of spikiness here, and makes a very different effect.
IF YOU WANT TO HEAR HOW DIFFERENTLY A SINGER MAY
IMAGINE A SONG AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE CAREER . . .
Angelika Kirschschlager, mezzo-soprano; Helmut Deutsch, piano. Sony, from A.K.'s first recital recording, made in the Haydnsaal of Esterházy Palace, Eisenstadt (Austria), May 12-16, 1996
Listen on YouTube (audio only)
[arr. Martin Kubik] Angelika Kirschschlager, mezzo-soprano; Philharmonia Schrammeln (Martin Kubik and Andreas Grossbauer, violins; Heinz Hromada, contraguitar [or Schrammel guitar]; Günter Haumer, Knöpferlharmonika [Styrian accordion or squeezebox]; Hannes Moser, G clarinet). DG, recorded in Casino Baumgarten, Vienna, Mar. 8-9, 2010
I don't think I have to say anything -- the performances speak for themselves. A really solid early-career effort in 1996, then in 2010 . . . well, if you look at the roster of Philharmonia Schrammeln, Angelika K.'s 2010 collaborators, you might be a little nervous. In fact, their contribution is quite luscious, don't you think? And the singer sounds utterly at home with the prevailing atmosphere.
IF YOU'VE READ THE PREVIOUS POST, YOU ALREADY KNOW
WHY WE'RE SO INTERESTED IN "ABLÖSUNG IM SOMMER"
But I think it's going to take a second part of the post to see how our three Mahler Wunderhorn songs have found their way into this improbably song grouping.
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