Meeres Stille, D216 (Schubert) - from CDA68010 - Hyperion Records

Other recordings available for download

Dame Janet Baker (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)» More

Reviews

‘Florian Boesch is the kind of baritone who, once heard, makes you want to hear him in any and all repertoire appropriate to his voice. A more alluringly rich voice than Christian Gerhaher’s is hard to imagine until hearing Boesch, who has a greater capacity for soft singing, maintaining an interpretatively interesting tone even in pianissimos … Boesch isn’t the sort of singer who tells you what to think or feel in this music. He lays it out with hugely attractive (and protracted) clarity and then lets you enter the music a fuller participant’ (Gramophone)

‘Boesch's singing is faultless: he's in fine voice and marvellously alert to every verbal nuance, without ever fracturing the line for the sake of the text. Vignoles, playing some of Schubert's most taxing accompaniments, tirelessly matches his every emotional shift. Very fine’ (The Guardian)» More

‘Florian Boesch and Roger Vignoles are two of the best performers of Lieder in our time … Boesch sings with the gentle sadness which pervades most of the songs that follow, his rich, true baritone voice reflective rather than assertive, the words all the more moving for the restraint with which they are delivered … this fine disc, pervaded with sadness though it is, has a great deal to offer those who love Schubert’s songs. There is an excellent booklet note by Richard Wigmore, and his own very good translations’ (International Record Review)» More

‘The Romantic outsider fated or choosing to live beyond the bounds of society is the main theme of this striking collection. Boesch, who recently released a powerfully convincing Schöne Müllerin cycle, has an ideal voice, at once dark and dazzling, and his accompanist —except that Schubert's rich, inventive piano parts are so much more than accompaniments—is perfect’ (The Sunday Times)» More

Introduction
English

This is a marvel of impressionistic calm. The sea is motionless but we are also aware of the sinister implications of a becalmed voyage before the era of steam power. A tensely wrought melodic line is underpinned by breathless modulations - the arpeggii in the piano part convey stillness and fear at the same time. The song is only one page long but it somehow suspends time and place: the horizons are endless, the ship is cradled in dark waters, the piano part seems to measure the sea's depth, its chords vibrating like a sounding with line and lead. Above the vocal line there is no trace of wind in the sails. Fischer-Dieskau has written that 'the score of the song looks like a drawing' and indeed here is a map of motionless semibreves and the undulating lines denoting arpeggii seem nautically illustrative. The only undercurrent is one of human apprehension at the void created by Nature who has withdrawn her cooperation.

Goethe's poem dates from 1787 when, during his Italian journey, he voyaged from Naples to Sicily, and encountered all weathers. Schubert never even saw the sea - Austrian lakes were as near as he got. Beethoven also set the poem (chorally with orchestra} at more or less the same time, linking it with a happy ending - a setting of the pendant poem, Glückliche Fahrt (Prosperous Voyage). Schubert preferred to leave the ship at sea, captured for ever and set under glass on the waters' depths.

Other albums featuring this work

Schubert: The Complete Songs

Graham Johnson (piano)

CDS44201/4040CDs Boxed set + book (at a special price) — Download only

‘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. 1 - Janet Baker

Dame Janet Baker (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

CDJ33001Download only

‘Dame Janet is in glorious voice’ (The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs)
‘One of the loveliest records even Dame Janet has made’ (The Guardian)» More

Recording details: November 2012
All Saints' Church, East Finchley, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by David Hinitt
Release date: February 2014
Total duration: 2 minutes 23 seconds

Cover artwork: The Wanderer Above the Sea of Mist (1818). Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)