Customer Reviews

Vocal Duets By Dvorak Brahms & Reger

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I wished I liked this recording more, since both of the vocalists are fine performers, the accompanist is an acknowledged expert, and the repertoire (outside of Dvorak's well-known Moravian duets) is refreshingly different. But I find this CD rather hard to listen to, in all honesty. It's based on a successful concert given at the Schubertiade festival a year before the recording was made in 1994. Banse at that time was one of Fassbaender's students and she has since gone on to a successful international career. As for Fassbaender, she was nearing the end of her performing career, which included decades of intensive engagement with the German Lied. Both voices are in good shape, the sound quality is top notch, and they're singing in their native tongue, which is always a plus.

So what's wrong? The voices don't blend well, I fear. Fassbaender's instrument is round, soft-grained, mature, and occasionally a little frayed, while Banse's is much brighter, more metallic, and more forwardly placed. The two tonalities clash with each other all over the place, but especially at higher volumes and pitches. Banse tends to overpower Fassbaender in climaxes. Even more problematic is that both singers use plenty of vibrato, but at different speeds, which gives the musical lines an unsettled, jittery quality. They don't seem to have tried to blend their tones at all, but rather sing with their own independent voices. All of these duets rely on the vocalists singing matching lines in thirds, fourths, and fifths, so the tonal discrepancies can't be hidden. If you listen to Edita Gruberova and Vesselina Kasarova's duet CD, which contains some similar repertoire, or the CDs of lied duets by Felicity Lott and Ann Murray, you'll hear singers who are much more successful in singing *together*, and not just singing.

Regretfully, I'd call this a miss.