Mendelssohn: On Wings of Song [Import]

Felix [1] Mendelssohn (Composer), Graham Johnson (Performer), Margaret Price (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Graham Johnson, Margaret Price
• Composer: Felix [1] Mendelssohn
• Audio CD (April 13, 2004)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Hyperion UK
• ASIN: B0001FYRD0
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #249,101 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars LITTLE STURM AND LESS DRANG, March 16, 2007

By 

DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mendelssohn: On Wings of Song (Audio CD)

Mendelssohn's songs with words are bound to invite comparison with his Songs Without. Those 48 elegant piano pieces have often been viewed as being a little lacking in variety and as being a walk on the mild side. This disc contains 24 songs carolled by Margaret Price to a tasteful accompaniment from Graham Johnson, so it's unlikely that we are going to be given any renderings that misrepresent them. Nor are we. The performers take us back to the familiar world of the Lieder Ohne Worte, and rightly so. The songs range from the composer's teens to late in his brief career, and to my ears the numbers selected improve in general as they go along, and the performances improve along with them.

With the ultra-precocious Mendelssohn of all composers we would not be entitled to make excuses for shortcomings in early works on grounds of youth. This is, after all, the composer of the Rondo Capriccioso for piano at age 16 and of the octet and the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream very shortly afterwards. When it comes to the early songs it may be that he had to stay within the rules imposed by his conservative teacher. However even if he was trifling with his great genius for reasons of enforced discipline, he was still trifling with his genius, and that is how the first few songs here come across to me. There are glimpses of what he could really do, all the same. The liner-note writer gets rather excited about the Hexenlied (Witches Song), but what I find in it is not the `frenzied goings-on' that he detects, but more a neat and effective musical equivalent of a story about witches for young children - graphic but not too frightening. Its mood and style remind me more of the Midsummer Night's Dream, I'm glad to say, than of Mendelssohn's truly deplorable and misconceived music for Goethe's Walpurgisnacht. What is interesting is how the performers go about this first departure from the tone of the previous selections. Margaret Price makes what seems to me a slightly nervous attempt at witchiness, as if afraid of overdoing it, as well she might be. I think they could have taken a little more of a risk without guying the song. The next two numbers more or less revert to the manner of the earlier efforts, but the beloved melody of On Wings of Song bursts through like a ray of sunshine on track 8 - simple and unambitious still, but fresh forever.

As the recital progresses and the composer's opus-numbers get higher we start to encounter the greater Mendelssohn. One that made an impression on me was the so-called Folk Song on track 14. Now at last we are within striking distance of Schubert and Schumann, and I was surprised that this is the only song out of the 24 in which Mendelssohn adopts Schubert's favourite device of echoing the vocal cadences in the accompaniment. This simple trick can produce expressive wonders, and it's not as if Schubert had some copyright on it - you will find Beethoven using this device in one of the songs from Egmont. Margaret Price deepens her tone here in a way I like, and Graham Johnson in parallel dares to lean on the bass a little more, something I wish he had done in some of the earlier songs. Matters then keep improving. Das Waldschloss on track 21 is a splendid spooky effort, splendidly realised with real atmosphere to it. The last two songs have genuine stature to them, particularly the Nachtlied. Here the performers rise to the occasion, with power in Price's voice and depth in Johnson's playing.

It may well be, of course, that they were restraining themselves in the earlier numbers so as to achieve this sense of climax, and there would have been nothing wrong with that. All the same, I can't escape a slight sense of regret at what seems to me a rather pallid impression early on. Johnson in particular, while technically immaculate and showing a fine sense of proportion, could have done a little more near the start to remind us that Mendelssohn was one of the foremost piano players of his time by showing us more of the resourcefulness in the piano part.

A fine disc for all that, and one I recommend. The recording seems good by and large, although there was a slight sense of strain on a few of the singer's high notes. The liner-note is quite helpful in general too, if rather overdoing its emphasis on such wonders as a `magical shift from D to B major' somewhere, which is rather the equivalent of complimenting an author on his spelling and punctuation. The Wings of Song wafted me into the ether not infrequently, and I hope they will do the same for you.