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Track(s) taken from CDJ33018

Abendlied, D499

First line:
Der Mond ist aufgegangen
composer
November 1816; first published in 1885
author of text

Peter Schreier (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: August 1992
St George's, Brandon Hill, United Kingdom
Produced by Martin Compton
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: June 1993
Total duration: 2 minutes 45 seconds
 

Reviews

‘Superlative’ (Gramophone)

‘An outstanding disc in a distinguished series’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘The record brings joy; I've been playing it again and again’ (The Observer)

‘One of the glories of the series’ (Fanfare, USA)
'Placid and mild' is how Capell describes this song. So it may be, but it contains hidden depths. Despite its simplicity, or perhaps because of it, the music seems to go to the heart of the Claudius poem with a deep religious feeling which eschews the epic or grandiose. With its gently rocking semiquaver accompaniment the song glimmers and lowers in the evening light, but there is an essential safety and goodness about this music far from the ghostly eeriness of some of the Schubert nocturnes. As in many poems by Claudius, extremely happy family man that he was, we can hear the security of the hearth and an untroubled belief in the goodness of the world. There was much that was domestic and optimistically trusting about Schubert too, which is perhaps one of the reasons why, despite the modesty of most of the Claudius settings, we feel that this poetry fits our composer's personality like a glove.

The tune starts in a very familiar manner, the exploration of an arpeggio, often the first reconnaissance expedition sent out by Schubert when he is deciding how to conquer a lyric. It is then that we notice something familiar about the tune for the words 'Der Mond ist aufgegangen'; it is modelled (whether consciously or not is impossible to say) on a figure given to the clarinets and bassoons in the Larghetto of Beethoven's Second Symphony (from bar 32 onwards). The accompanying figurations are discreet except for occasional flashes of temperament—the staccato left hand which comments on the words 'hell and klar', and the hidden tune in the right hand postlude, also underpinned by staccato quavers in the bass. The sound of a bassoon in a wind ensemble is so vividly suggested here that perhaps Schubert did have Beethoven's orchestration in mind. Appropriately for the deep, dark woods described in the fourth and fifth lines of the poem, there is a mysterious legato counter-melody in the pianist's left hand. The separation of the rather high vocal line from the low-lying murmuring accompaniment, and the cupola of a night sky that separates the singing and playing protagonists, brings another, rather more profound nocturne to mind, Nacht und Träume.

This lyric was praised by Herder as an ideal model of German folksong of its kind. It was set by a number of composers, including C P E Bach and J A P Schulz (1747–1800) who alongside Reichardt and Zelter was one of the founders of the Second Berlin school. Schulz's simple but beautiful song, still well-known in Germany, is in the manner of a chorale; Schubert almost certainly knew it and deliberately attempted to find a different way of setting these famous words.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1993

Other albums featuring this work

Schubert: The Complete Songs
CDS44201/4040CDs Boxed set + book (at a special price) — Download only
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