Search - Grummer, Reimann :: Elisabeth Grummer Sings Mendelssohn/Schumann, etc.

Marvellous, unbroken, ecstatic delivery.

John Austin | Kangaroo Ground, Australia | 01/18/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Highly respected and esteemed by colleagues, critics and her public during a career of thirty years, Elisabeth Grümmer (1911-1986) was not adequately represented in the recording medium during her lifetime. I suspect that there may have been problems recording the voice. Consonants could have the force of an uppercut, and there was a gleam on the vowel sounds that could dazzle at fifty paces. The availability situation has been considerably improved in recent years by the release of hitherto unpublished material, including several CDs of lieder recitals deriving from German radio broadcasts. This Orfeo CD, released in 2000, is one of them. It presents a carefully balanced program in which you will find familiar and the unfamiliar items: songs by Mendelssohn and Schumann from the 1840s and songs by Schoeck from the 1940s. Grümmer shows herself to be a wonderfully sympathetic lieder singer. The voice is suitably restrained. In the Schumann song cycle, the changing stages of a tender female psyche are sensitively revealed, without a hint of sentimentality or operatic gesturing. Grümmer had what singers call "the long breath", enabling her to sing the lines of the sixth song of the Schumann cycle with marvellous, unbroken, ecstatic delivery.Packaging, programming, sound quality, and content make this a very superior product."