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Track(s) taken from CDA68010

Der Wanderer an den Mond, D870

First line:
Ich auf der Erd’, am Himmel du
composer
published by Tobias Haslinger in May 1827 as Op 80 No 1
author of text

Florian Boesch (baritone), Roger Vignoles (piano)
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CD-Quality:
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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 25 seconds

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

Other recordings available for download

Margaret Price (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)
Richard Jackson (baritone), Graham Johnson (piano)

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
In a work like this Schubert proves beyond dispute that he can compose his own folksongs when he has the mind. A year later he was to write Der Lindenbaum which was quickly elevated to be such a national treasure that it acquired the status of folksong and many people forgot (if they ever knew) that Schubert had written it. The newcomer to Der Wanderer an den Mond also feels that the music must be age-old, so memorable and pure it seems to be. It has an earthy peasant quality which suggests that a tune of timeless provenance has been provided with a piano accompaniment—in the manner of Ravel's Mélodies grècques for example. A second glance at the music, however, and above all the relationship of words to melody, is enough to convince one that the composer's masterful guiding hand is at work and at the height of its powers. The song is artfully simple and artlessly subtle because the person singing it is just such a person, a man of no fixed abode and no possessions, yet a wandering philosopher in his way—a prince of the road. A folksong-like simplicity is accordingly built into his characterisation, but within the context of a powerfully expressive Lied. The first review of this song (the Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of 23 January 1828) criticised Schubert for his prosody in accenting the unimportant word 'auf' in the very opening. But this merely shows how far the composer was prepared to go in order to introduce us to a rustic character whom we understand immediately is unconcerned with the niceties of speech; this so-called mistake makes the music strong, simple and more folk-like.

It is no accident that the opening tune in G minor has this down-to-earth quality—that is exactly where the wanderer is, his feet condemned to trudge the unfriendly earth. The vocal line starts in the lower part of the voice as if the singer at 'Ich auf der Erd' is looking down at his feet; then at 'am Himmel du' he gazes up at the moon and suddenly the tune jumps an octave into the heavens. Both travellers, the moon and its admirer, then occupy the middle of the stave at 'wir wandern beide rüstig zu'. In the third line of the first verse this contrast of tessitura also serves to underline a difference of mood—the traveller's 'ernst und trüb' as opposed to the moon's 'mild und rein.' It is all so natural and apt that one needs to remind oneself that it takes a special type of composer to reflect word-to-music details in such a way that we take them for granted There are other things in this song we scarcely notice on first hearing: the contrasts ('Ich' and 'du') in the first line have been harmonised by the straightforward apposition of G minor and D major chords, tonic and dominant; in the second line the moon music of 'mild und rein' is underpinned by D minor which gives a plaintive modal twist to the proceedings. The question ('Was mag der Unterschied wohl sein?') ends the verse in this same key; Schubert then simply changes F natural to F sharp in two chords (D minor—D major) and lo and behold we are in the dominant of the home key of G minor. It could not be simpler, but who else but Schubert could have done it? The tune of the second verse is exactly the same as the first but for the last three notes which fall earthward as they bitterly sum up the traveller's fate. Such a tiny difference as this—an upward inflection for a question ('Was mag der Unterschied wohl sein?') and then downward for the answer ('doch bin ich nirgend, ach! zu Haus') defines Schubert's genius for the modified strophic song.

But the greatest marvel is to come—the healing balm of moonlight streaming out in the major key. Up until now the accompaniment has been strongly accented chords, so simple on the page that they could be strummed on a guitar, the traditional instrument of travellers. Some of the chords are rolled in a no-nonsense manner which helps establish a mood of hearty self-reliance and the strong dotted rhythm of the jaunty little interlude which introduces the third line of the first verse suggests a certain type of grim courage, even defiance. At the beginning of the third verse ('Du aber wanderst') everything changes as the music softens into the major key. Instead of the heavy accented footfall of the traveller we hear the moon swimming (thanks to flowing semiquavers and a touch of pedal) in a pool of light and well-being. What is even more exceptional is that envy, bitterness or unhappiness are banished as the protagonist is overcome by admiration and love; in music of the greatest tenderness he salutes the moon as a marvel of nature. This song is thus a textbook case of how Schubert uses the polarity of major and minor ('the contrast', in Fischer-Dieskau's words, 'of masculine and feminine, of hardness and softness, of light and shade, of day and night') in order to depict that special realm of the spirit which is far removed from banal reality. The final verse is a compromise between the hearty opening and the dreamy atmosphere when the G major was first introduced into the picture. Compromise is the order of the day, for now the traveller can go on with life in a new perspective; in wishing happiness to those luckier than himself he has recovered his spirits. The four bars of the postlude allow him to walk offstage accompanied by a beam of light and as content as he will ever be.

It is worth noting that the words 'aus Westens Wieg' in Ostens Grab' in the first edition of Seidl's poems (and thus faithfully set by Schubert) make no sense in planetary terms. The sun and the moon rise in the East and set in the West. Seidl corrected it in later editions of his poems and we have accordingly changed it for this performance. One or two things in twentieth-century life are as fixed and reliable for us as they were for the composer, including, thank heavens, the workings of the sun and moon.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1992

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