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Die
Schöne Müllerin(The
Fair Maid Of The Mill) was written in 1823, predating Schubert'sWinterreise by some four years. As with the later work it uses
the words of the poet Müller, telling through a series of twenty
songs the story of a young apprentice miller who falls in love with his
master's daughter.
As usually
happens in these stories, all does not go smoothly - his initial belief
that his love is returned sours as he loses her to a forest hunter, until
finally in despair he throws himself into the brook to which he confided
his earliest hopes.
Unlike
the tragic Winterreise however, Schubert sets this verse to romantic
and sentimental music, the verses unlocking his feelings for nature and
the joys of youth - the composer was still only 26 at the time, though
he had just five more years to live.
If this
wonderful premiere recording has but one fault, it would be the downwards
transposition from the original youthful tenor to a slightly more mature
baritone pitch. That minor niggle aside, it is a superb compliment to
the Winterreise recorded by Hüsch and Müller
the year before (and offered here as PACO005),
with a recording quality that even manages to surpass that amazing recording.
Once again Hüsch is crisp and clear, his rich baritone perfectly
balanced to Müller's sympathetic accompaniment.
Between
1925 and 1945 Gerhard Hüsch was a regular star of the operatic stage,
making his debut Liberau in Lortzing’s Der Waffenschmied in
Osnabrück. He was also one of the most admired singers of Lieder
of the 1930's - as this recording demonstrates, this admiration was wholly
justified. After his retirement, Hüsch made a second outstanding
career as a master teacher of vocal interpretations, latterly also in
London.
REVIEW
of SCHUBERT - Die Schöne Müllerin
(Gerhard Hüsch, Hanns Udo Müller, 1934)
My
problem with Die Schöne Müllerin has always been
that it is about a very simple-minded young teenager who roves
alone, falls in love, is jilted, and commits suicide. While
there are wonderful teenage pianists and violinists, there
are no teenage lieder singers. Just as one does not want matronly
sopranos to portray dewy teenage Tatyanas in Tchaikovsky's
Eugene Onegin, one is uncomfortable with dry-voiced 50-year-olds
expressing the agonies of unrequited young love.
No one sounds like a teenager, but Gerhardt Hüsch comes
very close. He is so simple and joyous in proclaiming his
lust for roaming in the first song. In the sixth song, where
he is in love with the miller's daughter and begins to think
she reciprocates, he asks the miller's stream if she loves
him and Hüsch is so yearning here. In the next song,
the youth and Hüsch allow themselves some virile impatience.
She does say yes and there is such joy announced in the song
of triumph "Mine!" Alas, a competitor comes ("Hunter")
and Hüsch shows us the teenager's anger and despair.
Hüsch deepens his interpretation and uses the fires of
unrequited love to make a real human being out of that shallow
teenager, but consumes him in the process and the boy drowns
himself in the miller's stream. The final song, The Stream's
Lullaby, is sung by Hüsch and played by Miller with a
tenderness and empathy which no teenager could provide.
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