3 Beautiful Vocal Works, 3 Excellent Performances
Nicholas A. Deutsch | New York, NY USA | 05/08/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Frank Martin wrote some of the most substantial music, both instrumental & vocal, of the 20th century, & this is one of the best recent additions to the catalog of his works on CD - for me, the outstanding disc in the Chandos series with Matthias Bamert & the London Philharmonic. These 3 vocal works, one each from the 1940s, 50s & 60s, are not only individually beautiful & profoundly moving, but show Martin's skill in setting texts secular, sacred & religiously inspired. Though French was Martin's first language - & he set it superbly - from 1940 on he composed a number of important works on German texts (including Rilke's narrative cycle Der Cornet0 & all the pieces here show that he brought comparable sensitivity to the subtleties of that language - as he did to the Latin of the Stabat Mater, the 3rd "panel" of his Marian Tryptych. Conducting, playing & recording are first-rate, & the 3 soloists are outstanding; having lived with this disc for several years I can say the performances hold up beautifully. Should the composer-conducted versions of the 2 baritone pieces (with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau & the Berlin Philharmonic) return on CD, they will be very welcome, but David Wilson-Johnson's interpretations, sung with beautiful tone & great feeling, stand on their own. (Fischer-Dieskau can be heard in a slightly abridged version of the excerpts from Der Sturm in a live recording from 1961, on Cascavelle VEL 2001, a somewhat rushed performance under Ernest Ansermet.) Lynda Russell & Duncan Riddell are just as fine in the Maria-Triptychon; the composer's 1970 live version (Jecklin-Disco JD 645-2) is more propulsively conducted, & it is good to have a performance with the soloists for whom Martin wrote the work, Irmgard Seefried & Wolfgang Schneiderhan, but the boxy mono sound can't begin to do justice to the subtle, luminous colors of this work's orchestration. Don't hesitate to add this disc to your collection!"
Track Listings (13) - Disc #1