Hélène Lindqvist - Alban Berg: Jugendlieder
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Album Review Such things are legends made out of; 77 of Alban Berg's formative entries in the art song genre were for many decades suppressed by the estate of the composer, save seven numbers extracted for a publication entitled Sieben Frühe Lieder (Seven Early Songs), published in 1955. The other 70 sat in an alleged box kept beneath Berg's widow's bed, along with sketches that would serve to complete the unfinished opera Lulu. No one was permitted to touch these manuscripts. After Berg's widow died, the completed Lulu appeared almost immediately, but nothing happened with the group of songs now known as Berg's Jugendlieder. Tantalizing evidence of the Jugendlieder surfaced in a late-'70s issue of The Musical Quarterly, revealing that they'd at least been inspected by a musicologist, who included musical examples as illustrations, but was prohibited from publishing even one whole song. Despite the long shadow that Berg casts over the history of music since his untimely death in 1935, his output remains frustratingly small, despite the two big operas, Wozzeck and Lulu. Certainly 70 previously unknown songs from Berg's hand would be big news, and yield treasures apace, no? Finally, a selection of 46 of Berg's Jugendlieder was published by Universal Edition in the mid-'80s, a little past the point when their appearance in print would have generated the most interest. Recordings taken from songs found among the Jugendlieder have trickled, rather than poured, into the catalog since then, with the redoubtable soprano Mitsuko Shirai presenting the most generous airing of them, prior to this release, on a 1990 Capriccio disc. Egyptian-Swedish soprano Hélène Lindqvist has lately more brought us this first full-length disc limited only to Jugendlieder on col legno, Alban Berg: Jugendlieder (Songs from the Youth). It contains 39 selections, Berg songs that date from 1900 up until the time he was just about finished in his studies with Arnold Schoenberg, 1908. Neither Alban nor Mrs. Berg should have felt embarrassed by any of these lieder, as all of them are of the highest quality. The earliest ones clearly demonstrate the decisive affect that Hugo Wolf's example had on Berg's own songwriting. Seeing a song in printed form is nothing like hearing it, and from this disc we learn that Berg was twisting around harmonies in a way that prefigures his mature style as early as Augenblicke (1904), even earlier than the author of The Musical Quarterly article placed it in the '70s. The performance, though, is less than ideal, as it appears that Lindqvist is a singer who is more attuned to operatic performance than lied, as her singing is rather straightforward, is not very emphatic, and she doesn't seem to have a good grasp of what constitutes style in the cabaret songs heard here. She and accompanist Philipp Vogler are an odd couple, in that he plays very boldly, drowns Lindqvist a couple of times, and seems to be pulling her along at others. Nonetheless, just to be able to hear some of the Berg songs that have never been recorded before is enough of an imperative to bring out his faithful, although if one is a fan of Hugo Wolf this will prove quite exciting as well, even though it is Berg. Col legno provides the texts for Alban Berg: Jugendlieder (Songs from the Youth), but no translations, a pity as many of these pieces have texts written by local people Berg himself knew, and it is unlikely to find them in English in either a book or on the web. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis , All Music Guide Credits
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