Search - Karl Schmitt-Walter, Hugo [Composer] Wolf, Franz [Vienna] Schubert :: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf 1915-2006 [Box Set]

Extraordinary, but...

Frank G. Feldman | Fair Lawn, NJ | 08/04/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Who can compare with her? Kiri Te Kanawa is a poor man's Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Renee Fleming a poor man's Kiri Te Kanawa... Supremely intelligent, ravishing sound, the pinnacle of German lieder singing and the few operatic roles in which she reigned supreme. And yet, and yet... AN ACTRESS. Listen carefully and you'll hear the mannerisms and overcompensations of the silent film stars in her intrepretations, i.e., the calculations, the endless rhetoric. She was both divine and a overly-practiced master of deceit. This is something quite beyond the simple-minded criticism of her as an ice princess. As an artist, she was utterly magnificent yet ruthlessly cruel and narcissistic in becoming so. What a problem this creates for the listener! Not unlike the problem of Wagner the composer, the ACTOR, another master of deceit, who, needless to say, played it out on a far vaster canvas. Listen long and hard enough and her CHARACTER peeks out from the beneath the CHARACTERS she is portraying in song and aria, as does his. It's the Meryl Streep conundrum. Who can hold a candle to her? And yet her chilly interior blows that candle out after you've listened long and hard enough and figured out the trick, the ruse, the deception. Compare Kathleen Ferrier. No trick there. A deep, generous and noble soul. Yes, Virginia, music DOES have a moral character."