Die Schöne Müllerin

Christoph Prégardien, Michael Gees

19,9928,49
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Original Recording Format: DSD 64
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The beautiful miller’s daughter – beautifully adorned?
The song cycle Die schöne Müllerin is Schubert’s first complete large-scale song cycle. It had been preceded by smaller cycles, for example the ‘Harfnerlieder’ from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister (1816) and Die Abendröte, on texts by Friedrich Schlegel (1819-23), a larger cycle that had remained incomplete (Schubert had only a few Lieder from this cycle published). These cycles lacked any narrative thread, so that the composer must have been lacking the epic momentum that would bind the single songs together. In this respect Wilhelm Müller’s Lieder suited the composer very well. The poems originated in a ‘Liederspiel’ (a play with songs) performed in the winter of 1816-17 among an intimate circle of friends in Berlin, to which, apart from the poet himself and his composer of that time Ludwig Berger, the painter Wilhelm Hensel belonged. (Hensel later married Mendelssohn’s sister.) In the years 1818-20 the poet extended and reworked his cycle, and he published it in 1821 in a collection of small volumes of poetry with the title ‘Sieben und siebzig Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten’ (Seventy-Seven Poems from the Posthu- mous Papers of a Wayfaring Horn Player).

A ‘Liederspiel’ of this kind, in other words a series of poems that one could also present in performance, was what the composer was looking for. He set it to music in a year in which he was seriously ill: it appears that in October 1823, when he was starting work
on the songs, he was a patient in the Vienna general hospital. At the same time, however, he had also largely overcome an artistic crisis during which he had, over the course of some years, been searching for new paths. On 30 November 1823 Schubert wrote to his close friend Franz von Schober: “Since the opera [Fierabras] I have composed nothing except a few Müllerlieder. The Müllerlieder will appear in four volumes, with vignettes by Schwind. – For the rest, I hope to regain my good health, and this new-found benefit will help me forget all my suffering […]”. These few lines are revealing: they show the close association between compositional work, illness and hope for healing, and that the expression “a few Müllerlieder” is not to be taken seriously, but rather as a topos of affected modesty. For Schubert was al- ready, while at work on the composition, thinking about the print layout: he had in mind a presentable edition with vignettes by his very close friend the artist Moritz von Schwind. This was to be something new and extraordinary: a large-scale song cycle. (As things turned out, the volumes appeared in a relatively modest format, without the vignettes, and in five instead of four volumes.) 

Tracklist

Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.
1.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Das Wandern
02:27
2.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Wohin?
02:28
3.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Halt!
01:32
4.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Dansagung an den Bach
02:13
5.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Am Feierabend
02:51
6.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Der Neugierige
04:20
7.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Ungeduld
02:51
8.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Morgengru?
04:08
9.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Des Mullers Blumen
03:26
10.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Tr_nenregen
04:32
11.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Mein!
02:27
12.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Pause
03:54
13.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Mit dem grunen Lautenbande
02:00
14.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Der J_ger
01:10
15.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Eifersucht und Stolz
01:46
16.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Die liebe Farbe
04:19
17.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Die bose Farbe
02:08
18.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Trockne Blumen
03:23
19.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Der Muller und der Bach
03:38
20.
Die Schone Mullerin D 795, Op. 25- Des Baches Wiegenlied
05:56

Total time: 01:01:29

Additional information

Label

SKU

CC72292

Qualities

, ,

Channels

, ,

Artists

,

Composers

Genres

,

Mastering Engineer

Bert van der Wolf

Instruments

,

Original Recording Format

Producer

Bert van der Wolf

Recording Engineer

Bert van der Wolf

Recording location

Galaxy Studios Belgium

Recording Software

Merging

Recording Type & Bit Rate

DSD64

Release DateMay 23, 2015

Press reviews

Kostas

Absolutely beautiful recording. True piano tone and a perfect voice for these songs. Natural balance between singer and piano. Pregardien is not a young man any more, unlike the young man of the song, but this is mature music and after hearing Pregardien I probably will not be able to listen to many of my other recordings of this cycle. I tried listening to Peter Schreier’s recording with Andras Schiff and I put it away for good – no comparison with Pregardien/Gees. Contributing to the beauty of this recording are the embellishments that Pregardien and Gees add to the songs. Nothing excessive, no interpolated high notes, nothing show-offish, just simple but immediately noticeable grace notes and little trills. It is superb musicianship.

All Music

This is a sensitive reading of Die Schöne Mullerin demonstrating complete integration with the material. Challenge Classics’ Die Schöne Mullerin with Christoph Prégardien and Michael Gees is a recording worthy of taking pride of place on the shelf alongside such “classic” versions as those by Richard Crooks, Aksel Schiøtz, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and is in considerably better recorded sound than any of them.

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