Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.
Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.
Please use the dropdown buttons to set your preferred options, or use the checkbox to accept the defaults.
The comfort of being indoors on a winter evening is marvellously conveyed in the introduction. The joy and security of the fireside on a stormy night was to be given rapturous expression twelve years later in Schumann's Kerner setting Lust der Sturmnacht, but there are no raging elements here, only the gently falling snow. Perhaps this is what Schubert means to convey in what Capell calls the 'patter of soft semiquavers' in the accompaniment, as soothing as the sound of gentle rain falling on the roof at bedtime. This throbbing undertow pervades the song and is perhaps the secret of its hypnotic restfulness; it is the discreet work of those inner fingers of the pianist's right hand which are often asked to simulate the work of a string quartet's second violin and viola. The little finger sings the first violin's beautiful melody which is later taken up by the voice and which is the main theme of this nocturnal impromptu. What a skilfully constructed theme this is—a melody in B flat major of a great span, uninterrupted in its flow and unpunctuated by rests. It begins on a contented plateau of repeated notes in the first bar, and then lifts a third, only to fall with a sigh, a pattern (stillness followed by the stretching out of longing resolving into acceptance) which is then repeated and developed in sequence before being rounded off by a tiny cadential figure of four semiquavers. This last gruppetto is a motif which varies with the greatest ingenuity at the close of each reappearance of the refrain, and which is a tonal analogue for 'sinnen', the process of turning thoughts over in the mind. Only Schubert could suggest the exquisite combination of contentment and pain outlined by this great melody. We are left in no doubt that these notes represent the thoughts (for this is an interior drama) of a tranquilly sitting figure. We will later discover in the denouement of the song's final pages the reason for the ache in the music—and also its hard-won joy.
We begin by listening, through the narrator's ears, to the world about us. When we hear that the tradesmen of the town have stopped their work, that the people are tired (the stretch and yawn of the turn at 'und ist müd') and that the street noises are muffled by a blanket of snow, we are ready to begin (from Verse 2) a gradual retreat from the here and now. The solitary thinker needs to find his way into the past in order to rediscover his precious memories. He moves through one harmonic portal after another on a journey which only Schubert could arrange. The first of these important doorways is the magical modulation from the home key of B flat into G major which leads us into the central panel of the song at 'Wie thut mir so wohl.' The narrator sits in the dark (the piano's commentary after 'der selige Frieden' recalls the writing in the left hand in Der blinde Knabe) until he has a visitor—the arrival of the light of the moon at 'nur der Mondenschein kommt.' This prompts a further journey from G into E flat major (the same key in which 'es zieht ein Mondenschatten' appears to lighten the darkness in the first song of Winterreise) and this initiates an extended soliloquy about the narrator's heavenly guest. During the course of this there is another breathtaking modulation (at 'Ist gar ein stiller, ein lieber Besuch'), this time into D major, and we have reached the song's inner sanctum of tranquillity and reflection. The music gradually retraces its steps to B flat major via G major, and to what at first seems to be a straightforward recapitulation of the opening theme at 'Ich sitze dann stumm.' But Schubert has not yet played the final hand of the evening: the first inversion of F minor under 'denke zurück' moves us into the past by steering us away from a predictable A natural in the bass. Instead we hear something a little deeper; a shift of harmony is here also a time shift.
The real recapitulation is soon at hand and everything comes into focus as the narrator is at last in touch with profound memories of his beloved wife, lost to him in person perhaps, but now alive once more in his mind. Significantly, she makes her reappearance not in some distant tonality but in the home key, her presence signified by a glorious counter-melody in the piano at 'Denke an sie' (surely a deliberate extra variation of the B flat Rosamunde music which inspired the piano Impromptu Op 142) and this serves as a descant to our song's by now familiar vocal theme. This passionate combination transfigures what we are now made to realise has only been half of the whole, half of the music for a story of shared lives; as Derby's theme joins Joan's we briefly hear the new (or rather very old) complete story. The memory of happiness prompts a brief moment of exaltation, for there is life in the old boy yet. The vocal line is turned on its head: instead of F rising note by note to B flat (which we have heard on the first appearance of 'Denke an sie, an das Glck der Minne') those words are repeated somewhat operatically, starting on the F an octave higher (the highest and longest note in the piece) and falling to B flat via an affecting appogiatura on the word 'sie'. Just for a moment we hear the energy and gallantry of a young lover as the passion of time gone by reasserts itself. The moment soon passes and only memories remain; the motif of four contemplative semiquavers plus a plaintive cadence is repeated again and again for 'und sinne'—in thus embroidering 'und' Schubert never wrote a more eloquent melisma on a seemingly unessential word. The postlude stretches upwards to embrace the distant key of D major for one last time, but with a smile (or is it perhaps tears?) sinks back into the armchair comfort and solitude of B flat. In this quintessential portrait of Biedermeier life nothing has happened of very great import. It is only the sympathetic listener who will detect in it a masterful musical evocation of those feelings of which Hardy wrote, when the 'fragile frame at eve' is shaken with 'throbbings of noontide.'
from notes by Graham Johnson © 1992
Schubert: The Complete Songs ‘This would have been a massive project for even the biggest international label, but from a small independent … it is a miracle. An ideal Christ ... ‘Please give me the complete Hyperion Schubert songs set—all 40 discs—and, in the next life, I promise I'll "re-gift" it to Schubert himself … fo ...» More |
Schubert: The Hyperion Schubert Edition, Vol. 15 - Margaret Price ‘Margaret Price has one of the most distinctive and attractive voices of any soprano before the public today and her contribution to the Hyperion Schu ... ‘Exquisite’ (Daily Mail)» More |
Schubert: The Songmakers' Almanac Schubertiade ‘Impossible to imagine anyone not deriving enormous pleasure from this collection’ (BBC Music Magazine) ‘Reviewers have long since run out of adjectives to describe Graham Johnson's superb complete Schubert song series for Hyerion. Now, for the Schubert ...» More |