PACO025: Dichterliebe

Working from near-mint Australian pressings, generously provided for this release by Mark Obert-Thorn, I was able to take advantage of much quieter disc surfaces than normally found on UK HMV discs. The results of this XR remastering, especially when heard in Ambient Stereo, are simply amazing. Hüsch's voice and diction has surely never come across as clearly and richly as presented in this recording - and his performance is simply superb.

In 2005 Pristine Audio's remastered recordings of Hüsch and Udo Müller's Schubert Lieder (Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin) were both critic's CDs of the Year at MusicWeb International - this third selection of Lieder can not only stand alongside our earlier releases in terms of performance, but thanks to advances in remastering technologies and techniques in just three short years, can surely ourshine both in terms ot sound quality.

Notes on the 24-bit download: Please see this page for test files and further information regarding this format. Although restoration work is done at a sample rate of 44.1kHz, we have upsampled the final 24-bit master to 48kHz for additional replay compatibility of our FLAC download.

Our twenty-four bit FLAC downloads can be replayed in full quality using a standard DVD video player, a DVD writer and an inexpensive piece of PC software - see here for more information about replay from Video DVD discs.

Gerhard Heinrich Wilhelm Fritz Hüsch (Hanover, February 2, 1901 - Munich, November 23, 1984) was one of the most important German singers of modern times. He specialized in Lieder, and to a lesser extent in opera.

Between 1925 and 1942, Hüsch sang regularly at several German (as well as British and Italian) opera houses, primarily in Berlin from 1930 onwards. The role for which he is best remembered is that of Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute, but his repertoire included most of the standard lighter baritone roles, including Wagner's (he appeared at Bayreuth, most notably as Wolfram in Tannhäuser) and Richard Strauss's (he appeared in the premiere of Strauss's Intermezzo). Lacking the vocal amplitude of his contemporaries Hans Hotter and Gottlob Frick, Hüsch concentrated on beautifully lucid diction and an unfailingly smooth vocal line.

Nowhere were these qualities better displayed than in his pioneering pre-war Lieder records. Here he shows the art which conceals art. He performed the first more-or-less-uncut versions of Schubert's Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin song-cycles, and Beethoven's An die Ferne Geliebte; his discs of songs by Hugo Wolf, made under Walter Legge's auspices, helped introduce that composer to thousands of music-lovers previously unfamiliar with Wolf's output; and he released a generous selection of songs by Hans Pfitzner, these recordings bearing the imprimatur of Pfitzner himself at the piano. The obscure Finnish composer Yrjö Kilpinen found in Hüsch a steadfast champion. Sometimes Hüsch performed in choral masterpieces as well, his recorded work in this field including an exceptional Jesus in a wartime set – severely abridged – with Günther Ramin conducting, of Bach's St. Matthew Passion.

After World War II, Hüsch, whose political naïveté during the Third Reich (and, in particular, closeness to Rosalind von Schirach, the sister of Baldur von Schirach) was unlikely to endear him to the Allies, mostly abandoned concert and operatic appearances, preferring to concentrate on teaching. A professor at the Munich Hochschule für Musik, he numbered among his pupils the British tenor Nigel Rogers. He gave master classes not only in Europe but in Japan. By now most of his large discography has been reissued on compact disc.

Click here for the full score (scanned PDF, International Music Score Library Project)

Dichterliebe, 'The Poet's Love' (composed 1840), is the best-known song cycle of Robert Schumann (Op. 48). The texts for the 16 songs come from the Lyrisches Intermezzo of Heinrich Heine, composed 1822-1823, published as part of the poet's Das Buch der Lieder. Following the song-cycles of Franz Schubert (Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise), those of Schumann constitute part of the central core of the genre in musical literature.

Author of the sarcastic Die Romantische Schule, Heine was a vocal critic of German romanticism. In some of his poetry, and notably in Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen of 1844, the romantic lyrical conventions are used as vessels to deploy content of biting, satirical nature. Schumann's Dichterliebe was composed before Heine's Deutschland and does not appear to portray this ironic dimension: scholarship is divided as to what extent Schumann intended to express it.

Heine's Lyrisches Intermezzo consists of a verse Prologue and 65 poems. The Prologue (Es war 'mal ein Ritter trübselig und stumm - There once was a Knight, woeful and silent..) tells of the sorrowful knight that sits gloomily in his house all day, but by night is visited by his fairy (nixie) bride, and dances with her until daylight returns him to his little poet's room (Poeten-stübchen). The 65 poems follow, of which the 16 of the Dichterliebe are a selection. The conclusion of it all is that he is going to put the old bad songs and dreams, all his sorrowful love and suffering (and possibly himself) into a huge coffin, which twelve giants will throw into the sea. This catastrophe is slightly reminiscent of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, in which the hero ends by drowning himself in the brook which he has followed through the cycle.

Das Buch der Lieder was given its second edition, with preface from Paris, in 1837, the songs were composed in 1840, and the first edition of Dichterliebe was published in two volumes by Peters, in Leipzig, 1844. Though Schumann originally set 20 songs to Heine's poems, only 16 of the 20 compositions were included in the first edition. (Dein Angesicht (Heine no 5) is one of the omitted items. Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, On Wings of Song (Heine no 9), is best known from a setting of Felix Mendelssohn's).

The very natural, almost hyper-sensitive poetical affections of the poems are beautifully mirrored in Schumann's settings, with their miniaturist chromaticism and suspensions. The poet's love is a hothouse of nuanced responses to the delicate language of flowers, dreams and fairy-tales. Schumann adapts the words of the poems to his needs for the songs, sometimes repeating phrases and often rewording a line to supply the desired cadence. Dichterliebe is therefore an integral artistic work apart from the Lyrisches Intermezzo, though derived from it and inspired by it. Schubert's selection of lyrics for his own Heine songs had sought different themes.

Although frequently associated with the male voice, the work was dedicated to the great soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, so that the precedent for performance by a female voice is primary. The first complete public recital of the work in London was given by Harry Plunket Greene, accompanied from memory by Leonard Borwick, on 11 January 1895 at St James's Hall.