QUARTERLY REVIEW THE GRAMOPHONE AND THE VOICE By DESMOND SHAWE-TAYLOR A Schubertian Winter

AS readers will know, during the last few months it has positively rained— though snowed would be a more appropriate word—complete Winterreises and Schwanengesangs. I spent the best part of a week in hearing and rehearing the three Winterreise sets (details conveniently set out above A.R.'s review on page 232 of the November issue) and the two-and-ahalf sets of Schwanengesang—which of course is not really a cycle but a publisher's title for a posthumous collection. Furthermore, I was driven (by curiosity rather than conscience) to dip here and there into earlier versions of the Winterreise made by all three singers—Fischer-Dieskau, Hotter, and Souzay (the last two now deleted). It proved an absorbing task, which only deepened my admiration for the greatest of all song cycles; also a very difficult one, even more difficult than I had expected. The brief reason behind the difficulty is simply that all three singers and their pianists are so good: good, of course, in different ways, and therefore excelling (and sometimes failing) at different points along the immortal icy road. If any of these three sets were the only one available, it would be sure of a rapturous welcome.

I was a little surprised to arrive at this opinion because, to be candid, I had guessed in advance that one of the three could be to some extent disregarded. How, I asked myself, could that fine artist Hans Hotter, recording the cycle for the third time, eight years after his previous version, often in still lower keys, and with a pianist who has not given us unalloyed pleasure on some other occasions, hold his own against his more youthful rivals ? Well, though it seemed impossible, he has done so; there is even a sense in which his new DGG version (artistically an improvement on its predecessor) could be called the most authentic and Schubertian of all. The deep keys and the noble bass voice (here in very good shape) do not, it is true, call up for us the physical presence of Mailer's rejected young lover—but neither did the greatest performance of the cycle I have ever heard, that of Elena Gerhardt; both these singers transcend actuality and give us instead a picture of universal suffering—sorrow, as one might say, in the abstract. In calling Hotter's new version authentic and Schubertian I mean that, though deeply felt, it is the simplest and most natural in manner : details don't stand out too much, and the singer is not anxious to make too many points, especially verbal points. Yet his enunciation, which had previously struck some vague patches, is now superlative. Erik Werba, his pianist, is not quite in the class of Dalton Baldwin or Gerald Moore, and may seem, in fact, to make rather too few points in Schubert's vivid accompaniments; but he never lets us down, and is never less than highly musical.

Having said all this, I must own that a balance of considerations (among them the fact that DGG have spread the Hotter recording expensively over four sides) would still impel me towards one of the other two versions: either Souzay's on Philips (with eight of the Schwanengesang songs as fill-up) or Fischer-Dieskau's on HMV (with the fourth side left blank). Most of my English colleagues and the great bulk of the public have no difficulty in deciding between these two; indeed Gerard Souzay, one of the most distinguished artists before the public, might pardonably resent the regularity with which his finest work is automatically, and sometimes unthinkingly, assigned to the second place. The case has never seemed simple to me, nor does it seem so here.

Souzay starts, of course, under the disadvantage that for him German is a learnt language. He has learnt it marvellously— so much, I suppose, even a German would admit: not only is the actual pronunciation very correct, but he clearly feels the meaning, force and colour of the individual word. But in such a song as Der Lindenbaum (one of his rare failures), which is almost a folk-song, neither his utterance of the words nor the colour of his tone carry us straight to the sweet, homely, German scene as Fischer-Dieskau does, nor does he achieve the necessary effect of distance in the last verse (where Hotter particularly_ excels). On the other hand, I find the quality of Souzay's tone throughout the cycle more consistently pleasing than that of FischerDieskau. Nothing, certainly, could be lovelier than the German baritone's more gentle tones, as displayed in song after song, notably in Irrlicht, Im Dorfe, TOuschung, Das Wirtshaus and Die Nebensonnen; it is some of his louder outbursts that still disturb me. Of course, loudness, even harshness, is often required by the music; but there are times, especially in the earlier songs, where Fischer-Dieskau begins to force, to do what musicians call "singing through the tone"; this can be heard at the end of Gefror'ne Triinen and Auf dem Flusse, and at the climaxes of Die Post and Letzte Hoffnung ("wein', wein' "). Sometimes this forcing begins to produce an 'edge' in the recording; or perhaps I should say that my gramophone, which had just accommodated Souzay's loudest tones without a trace of distortion, no longer transmitted an entirely acceptable quality. But in any case such singing, with many passages (e.g., the fourth line, "sie pfiff den armen Flachtling aus") more or less shouted, is to my ears distasteful.

Conversely, Souzay's biggest outbursts (e.g., in Auf dem Flusse) remain wholly musical: he never shouts or rants. He lacks Fischer-Dieskau's splendid breath-control, and for this reason cannot always carry his phrases through in so masterly a style. Both singers have evidently pondered long and deeply on the music, and both bring an intensely moving quality to their interpretations. Now and then Souzay's tempi strike me as questionable, whereas FischerDieskau's are almost invariably convincing. That Riickblick (marked "Not too fast") is taken by Souzay at too great a speed becomes clear in the lovely nostalgic middle section ("Wie anders hast du mich empfangen, du Stadt der Unbestandigkeit!"), where a slight slackening is in any case desirable; Fischer-Dieskau and Moore get this just right. Conversely, Souzay's Das Wirtshaus (admittedly marked "Very slow") is taken at so funereal a pace that the irony (that of the graveyard's being treated as a crowded inn) is imperceptible; besides, one begins to wait for the next note.

When we come to the last song of all, the amazing Leiermann, I much prefer Hans Hotter to either of his rivals, and even— for once—Erik Werba to Gerald Moore. A. R. singles out Moore's playing here for special commendation; but I confess to finding the little pause before the final chord of each phrase (even though Benjamin Britten does much the same) unnecessary, because the effect of numbed fingers is already written into Schubert's notes, and in the long run irritating, because we find ourselves beginning to wait for these pauses each time. The quiet, almost toneless despair of Hotter's reading of the song seems to me exactly right, although I wish he had not (like both the others) made a crescendo at the very end; Souzay makes the smallest one. I have never, by the way, taken the final stanza (as A. R. and others seem to do) as a literal invitation to the hurdy-gurdy man to join forces with the singer; surely it is a passing fancy, the last of many in the cycle, amounting to no more than "Poor old fellow! . . . A fine pair of minstrels we should make! . . ." The next moment, so I imagine, the wanderer will be alone again; and this time for ever.

Now, which set is it to be? Which for my desert island ? Forced to decide here and now, I feel that Fischer-Dieskau and Moore have a slight edge over the others—though there is also that other sort of 'edge' to be remembered. And I am not sure that Souzay's more lyrical and relaxed style might not, after all, wear better in the long run. This is, I repeat, a perplexing issue, not at all a straight one. All three singers are fine artists, and great music allows of more than one style of interpretation.

Those who (understandably) prefer decisive conclusions from their reviewers will rejoice to hear that there is little doubt in my mind about Schwanengesang. The new Fischer-Dieskau/Moore set (HMV), one of their finest joint achievements, is far superior on almost every count to that of Hermann Prey and Walter Klien on Decca. Much of Prey's singing here is too exaggerated and operatic, and too heavily accented; his one outstanding success is that last charmer of Schubert's career, Die Taubenpost, which he takes unusually slowly and in a gentle, relaxed manner that is very winning. The eight songs used by Souzay as fill-up to his Winterreise are splendidly done, with one exception, Der Atlas, which is taken so very slowly that the great ruined demigod seems devoid of muscle—after all, he is holding the world aloft! In the last section of Kriegers Ahnung Souzay's mezza voce is of the most ravishing quality, and he catches to perfection the easy, loving flow of Das FischermOdchen. In these last songs the freshness, purity and abundance of Schubert's genius leave one dazed and drunk with beauty; there has never been any one like him, nor can there ever be again.