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.

Click cover art to view larger version
Track(s) taken from CDJ33005

Wehmut, D772

First line:
Wenn ich durch Wald und Fluren geh’
composer
1822 or 1823; published in 1823 as Op 22 No 2
author of text

Elizabeth Connell (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: September 1988
Kimpton Parish Church, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: December 1989
Total duration: 3 minutes 10 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

The Songmakers' Almanac, Dame Felicity Lott (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Reviews

‘Once more Graham Johnson puts us in his debt by his considered juxtaposition of apposite songs and by bringing to notice pieces, not to say masterpieces, that have been unduly neglected. Elizabeth Connell is at her very best here’ (Gramophone)

‘A must for all Schubertians’ (American Record Guide)

‘I have never heard Elizabeth Connell's voice more beautifully caught on disc than in this Schubert series’ (The Guardian)

‘14 of Schubert's most verdant Lieder, presented with a purity of voice which matches their purity of heart’ (The Times)
The commentators vie with each other to praise this song, and rightly so. For Capell it is 'luxurious in its expression of grief', and for Einstein it contains 'the whole greatness and unaffected simplicity of Schubert in a nutshell'. The work is only a page long but it has the stature and grandeur of a much longer song, so much is packed into its tiny span. The key to it all is the ambiguity between 'wohl' and 'weh', between major and minor, the transient joy which brings tears. Spring was always a poignant season for Schubert (one has only to think of his Im Frühling and Frühlingsglaube for illustrations of the happiness tinged with melancholy—never self-pity—which is so characteristic of him). The drama and poignancy of the world's re-birth (and to what purpose?—it will all soon die again) is amply foreshadowed by the piano's two bars of weighty introduction; the voice enters over a repeat of these same harmonies. The tug of the unquiet heart, both happy and sad, pervades the song until the ravishing modulation into F sharp major on the word `Sch”nheit' floods the picture with the glow of the irresistible beauties of the here-and-now. The spread chords played by the open hand suggest to me both the impulse of wanting to embrace physically these meadows, and the inability to do so. The music then begins to shiver in muted tremolando, inspired obviously enough by the wind in the poem, but on another level, deeper than tremor or earthquake: what is really happening is a sea-change of perception. As ever, Schubert is the master of unleashing a tempestuous middle section (time after time in slow movements of sonatas we find this technique used to devastating effect) which leaves the reprise subtly yet irrevocably altered by what has been learned in the storm. What starts out as a repeat of the opening musical idea is suddenly different at the second time the word 'entschwindet' appears (the fall of the bass line is but part of the magic musical formula which somehow conveys acceptance and humility before the forces of nature). This is followed by the wide-open spaces of the inexorable concluding semibreves. The hushed void of Meeres Stille (Volume 1) comes to mind, and the same feeling of mankind adrift within a boundless destiny beyond his control. The change from major to minor underneath the first appearance of the word 'vergeht' takes all the colour from life, and drains the memory of nature's beauty. The second 'vergeht', and the bleak jump of a downward fifth, returns mankind to the arms of nescience.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1989

Other albums featuring this work

Schubert: The Complete Songs
CDS44201/4040CDs Boxed set + book (at a special price) — Download only
Schubert: The Songmakers' Almanac Schubertiade
CDD220102CDs Dyad (2 for the price of 1) — Download only
Waiting for content to load...
Waiting for content to load...