Customer Reviews

Richard Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder; Vier Lieder, Op. 27; Neun Lieder, Op. 10

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Konrad Jarnot is an English baritone very much in the mold of Fischer-Dieskau, with whom he has studied. His voice is one of great beauty and he produces it with ease and with seemingly limitless breath and technical control. He is as fine a lieder singer as you will ever hear.

Jarnot's recorded song repertoire is limited to a few discs on the defunct Oehms label. On each he combines familiar songs with something quite unusual. In this case, He combines the familiar Op. 10 songs, and four of the Op.27 A(among Strauss' best known) with a very rare traversal of the Vier letzte Lieder, written for soprano and orchestra.

The performances of the earlier songs are all sterling, with especially fine and passionate account of Die Georgine, Op. 10/4. But it is the final cycle that is a marvel, for it is a rear thing to find a pianist able not only to play these orchestral reductions well, but also to transpose them down to a baritone's key.

The extraordinary Helmut Deutsch is able to make one forget that Strauss wrote these songs for full orchestra (Flagstad premiered them with Furtwaengler in London) and finds ways to bring out inner voices in novel ways. Equally rare is for a male voice to sing with such unbounded lyricism: soaring legato phrases without any sacrifice of diction.

Now that Mr. Jarnot's recordings are available for MP3 download, I hope he will find a wider audience than his small label releases initially could find. As with his Mahler and Liszt/Wagner albums, this should not be missed.

I am always delighted when singers push the envelope in intrepid ways. Konrad Jarnot deserves credit for taking on the Vier letzte Lieder, and, in many ways, giving a new perspective on them. The songs that work best for him are September and Im Abendrot. Fruhling and Beim Schlafengehen cry out for a soaring soprano, and while he gives it his best shot, there is something lacking.

Part of it is that Jarnot has a gorgeous mezzo voce, but his high fortes tend to sound rather hectoring and pushed, a trait he unfortunately shares with his teacher and mentor Fischer-Dieskau. Thus at the end of Beim Schlafengehen, we get something rather stentorian rather then transcendent. At moments like this, I long for at very least a baritone with an easier, floatier top.

However, as I stated earlier, there is much to treasure here. Jarnot also does justice to many of the earlier songs as well, and there is a rarity here, "Wer hat's gethan?" which, according to the liner notes, was cut from the original Op. 10 collection and has only received one previous recording. He does very well by this and many of the other songs as well, in particular "Die Nacht" and "Morgen."

Helmut Deutsch takes on the unenviable task of having to simulate an orchestra in the Vier letzte Lieder. As in earlier versions of these songs with piano, even Malcolm Martineau's work with the coloristically limited Barbara Bonney, these songs cry out for orchestral accompaniment. Deutsch does his very best, however, and certain details, such as the trills at the end of "Im Abendrot" are very well done.

I give Jarnot big marks for going where others have feared to tread, and for daring to scale down his voice for the more intimate songs. Now if he could only get rid of those hectoring fortes...