Customer Reviews

Schubert: Die Schöne Müllerin, Op.25 song cycle

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It's not just the musical compatibility of brother and sister that I mean, it's that these particular performers seem to me ideally cast in Schubert's mill songs. The Classics for Pleasure LP was first made in 1973, and whether the sound has been enhanced for cd in 1995 I simply do not know. If it has, well and good, if not I shouldn't worry in the slightest. The piano sound was probably a little reticent in the original version, but it's very good in all essential respects, and the recorded tone is very sensitively gauged to the light lyric tenor of Ian Partridge as he sounded at the age he then was.

For me these are songs for the right kind of tenor and not for any baritone however eminent. The sense of youthfulness and innocence will strike you forcefully from the first bar of the first song, put over with delicious lightness and verve by Jennifer Partridge, her brother then following suit. In general their tempi are lively, making the slow pace of the 16th song, to the theme of green being the once-favourite colour in happier times, all the more effective by contrast. Ungeduld is very fast indeed and handled naturally and effortlessly like everything else here, and so is Mein, although Der Jaeger itself is not rushed. I like that touch. Speed and impetuosity are kept for the emotions of the mill-lad himself: the huntsman who ruins it all is portrayed otherwise.

There are any number of felicitous little effects, like the spring in the rhythm of the accompaniment at the start of Pause, and of effects that are far from being little like the heartrending conclusion to Trockne Blumen. However what makes this recital the great rendering it is consists in the performers' overall concept and grasp of the spirit of these songs. Schubert's mill songs are great art indeed, but the less `arty' they can be made to sound the better for them in practice, and this is where the Partridges excel. This set of songs is a story of inexperience tragically at the nonexistent mercy of The World as the young miller did not live much longer to know it - I had almost said of nature green in tooth and claw. What I love more than anything else about this account is that it is blessedly free of any sense of any academy of music. This is art concealing art - it must have taken the most thorough training to perform as flawlessly as Ian Partridge does here while contriving to sound as if it all came to him spontaneously. My feeling about this obviously comes in great part from my mind-set about the kind of voice I like in these particular songs, but the sense of effortlessness comes from the performers. And there is something else too. These 20 songs are 20 works of art in one sense, but in another sense they are only one. The composer himself sees to the effect of unity in general, what the performers have to do is not get in his way as far as that goes, and I am running out of expressions to indicate that they convey a superb sense of forward momentum. However when it comes to the last song of all the performing artists have a real task on their hands to convey the proper sense of finality. I think I never heard this sublime sign-off done so perfectly - self-repeating, serene, simple, utterly beautiful and utterly final.

There seem to be a few copies of the disc available here or there. If you don't get them someone else presumably will.