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Track(s) taken from CDJ33003

Der Zwerg, D771

First line:
Im trüben Licht verschwinden schon die Berge
composer
1822 or 1823; published in 1823 as Op 22 No 1
author of text

Dame Ann Murray (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: November 1988
Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Martin Compton
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: December 1989
Total duration: 5 minutes 23 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Julius Drake (piano)

Reviews

‘This persuasive disc is faultlessly recorded’ (Gramophone)

‘We await more with enthusiasm and admiration’ (American Record Guide)

‘For me this represents some of the finest Lieder singing on record’ (CDReview)

‘Ann Murray's singing is flawless’ (Music and Musicians)

‘Simply superb’ (San Francisco Chronicle)

‘In Ann Murray we have a worthy successor in the Ferrier/Baker line, a lovely voice used with great sensitivity’ (Which CD)
Surely all the work that Schubert did on gruesome Gothic ballads in his youth finds its final and most refined expression in this song, a subtle and understated apotheosis of the horror genre, which manages to be more chilling in its insistence on the colours of the half-light. The key is A minor, but the rhythmic impetus is that of two of Schubert's celebrated B minor works, the 'Unfinished' Symphony and the first Suleika song. The spirit of Beethoven, brandishing the rhythm of the fate motif from the C minor Symphony, animates the pianist's left hand. The atmosphere of Verse 1 is heavy and oppressively hushed. The narrator places the two protagonists, the queen and her dwarf, on the open sea at twilight. The interlude immediately after the word 'Zwerge' requires the pianist's right hand to sidle awkwardly across the keyboard, the left hand supplying misshapen accents. The description of the queen (2) is as pure as the heavens, her address to the stars (3) turns the musical tension's screw up to C minor; she is passively fatalistic, transfixed by astrological predictions of her doom. The dwarf's three verses (4 - 6) slump back into B minor and are governed by a grotesquely hobbling motif—obsequious, shifty, merciless—in the pianist's left hand. This is eerily prophetic of Wagner and this dwarf is surely the grandfather of Alberich. Schubert's favourite change from A minor to A major is used to very special effect at the beginning of 7. All the romantic longing of its familiar usage is turned on its head as surely as the roles of master and servant have been reversed in the scenario. Although the queen weeps and pleads, the composer looks deeper into her deranged mind: a kind of masochistic joy, sickly sweet in the major key, seeps into the music's fabric. Her plight is self-inflicted; she is a lost soul caught up with the dwarf in a perverted game, with fatal consequences. The murder is accomplished in the middle of her last speech (8); there is a sudden high leap of strangled terror in the voice part on the words 'sie sagt's', and the silk chord is pulled tight. Everything stops save a tremolando on a single note; life drains out of the music. The dwarf looks balefully at the body, and the fate motif of diminished fourths in the bass shows the stars' prophesies to have been fulfilled. A terrifying restatement of the dwarf's grotesque motif, this time in strident octaves, the loudest music in the piece, shows him still in the grip of a violent, festering passion. Is he villain or victim? Was Peter Grimes a murderer? The two misfits share a fate which brings both their eponymous works full circle: they sink their own boats, leaving behind the same empty seascapes with which their respective dramas have begun. Der Zwerg compresses operatic form into a few concentrated pages; it is a distillation of genius.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1989

Other albums featuring this work

Schubert: 21 Songs
Studio Master: CDA68169Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
Schubert: The Complete Songs
CDS44201/4040CDs Boxed set + book (at a special price) — Download only
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