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 CDJ33008

Wiegenlied, D498

First line:
Schlafe, holder, süsser Knabe
composer
November 1816; published in 1829
author of text

Sarah Walker (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: May 1989
Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: December 1990
Total duration: 2 minutes 50 seconds
 

Reviews

‘Walker, in probing, glowing form throughout, closes this long and profoundly satisfying recital with a hair-raising account of Erlkönig’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘This is distinguished singing indeed … Graham Johnson's unimpeachable choice of mood and the impeccable musicality and technique of his creative role at the piano is the linchpin of this great project’ (CDReview)
This beautiful little melody seems the most quintessential, the most fragile, the most heartfelt Schubert, and yet on paper it is hardly more than an oscillation between tonic and dominant. Richard Strauss borrowed it to quote in Ariadne auf Naxos, and who can blame him; when Schubert's music is on this plane it has an inevitability and economy which every single composer since must have envied. Apart from the fact that the composer thought that Claudius was the poet, although it now seems that he was not, there is one perplexing factor. This is the mystery of the middle verse, which is either a Romantic-poetic way of describing a cradle as a sweet grave (peaceful and comfortable), or something which actüally relates to a child's death. John Reed believes that Schubert was thinking mainly of the first verse when he wrote his music: 'The shadow of the grave, which obtrudes here as in so many early Romantic pieces on this subject, finds no place in Schubert's music'. Infant mortality was an everyday occurrence at this time; indeed only a few months after the supposed date of this song's composition (for it is not dated in the composer's hand, only entered as November 1816 in the Witticzek-Spaun collection), the composer's little half brother Theodor Kajetan Anton, only a few months old, died. Is it possible that this song dates from a short time later and is related to this family bereavement? If not, it is still hauntingly prophetic. I hear in this song not the comfortable baby-sitting of happy parenthood, but music of the greatest consolation and tenderness, a feeling of almost holy gratitude for life, however short. And then there is his use of the major key: a heart-breaking braveness and lack of self-pity combined with that unobtrusive melancholy that only Schubert can handle poignantly and unmawkishly.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1990

Other albums featuring this work

Schubert: The Complete Songs
CDS44201/4040CDs Boxed set + book (at a special price) — Download only
Waiting for content to load...
Waiting for content to load...