Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Songs (Konrad Jarnot; Adrianne Pieczonka)

Information

Composer: Erich Wolfgang Korngold

CD1

• So Gott und Papa will
• Sechs einfache Lieder, Op. 9
• Lieder des Abschieds, Op. 14
• Drei Gesänger, Op. 18
• Nachts
• Unvergänglichkeit, Op. 27

CD2

• Die tote Stadt, Op. 12: Marrietta's Lied & Tanzlied des Pierrot
• Drei Lieder, Op. 22
• Songs of the Clown, Op. 29
• Four Shakespeare Songs, Op. 31
• Fünf Lieder, Op. 38
• Sonett für Wien, Op. 41
• Einzeine Lieder

Konrad Jarnot, baritone

Adrianne Pieczonka, soprano

Reinild Mees, piano

Date: 2015

Label: Capriccio

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Review

Those who find Korngold’s music difficult to take may blench at the thought of a two-disc collection of his complete songs including previously unrecorded off-cuts, alternative versions, occasional pieces and extensive juvenilia (‘Der Knabe und das Veilchen’ is the work of a seven-year-old). Be that as it may, Capriccio’s project must be judged a major success. While individual items have been championed by such illustrious performers as Dietrich Henschel, Anne Sofie von Otter, Sarah Connolly and Renée Fleming, Adrianne Pieczonka and Konrad Jarnot explore further and are by no means outshone.

They make a slightly odd couple, this superstar Ariadne/Prima Donna and her Music Master, the latter allocated the lion’s share of the songs (there are no duets). Sopranos tackling Wagner as well as Strauss in the opera house do not always retain Pieczonka’s bloom and freshness in recital, and her vibrato only rarely hits the microphone unflatteringly. Brighton-born and German-domiciled, Jarnot is a natural recitalist, glorious in lyrical reverie, his light baritone strained now and then at high decibels. Reinild Mees navigates the challenging keyboard-writing with a rare combination of tact and sensitivity so that one barely registers the absence of the orchestra in the operatic excerpts or the Op 14 Abschiedlieder, source of the relatively familiar ‘Sterbelied’ after Christina Rossetti. Straussian Sachertorte is by no means the collection’s only mode. There’s early material indebted to Brahms, Wolf and Mahler, and the more utilitarian Shakespeare settings of the 1930s include a haunting take on ‘Desdemona’s [Willow] Song’ that might have been composed by Moeran or Warlock.

A little clunky design-wise, the accompanying booklet contains helpful notes by Brendan Carroll and biographies of the performers. So far so good, but, notwithstanding the singers’ clarity of diction and a lovely, lucid recording, the patchy provision of texts is a real drawback. In several cases we are told that permission to reprint relevant material was not forthcoming. Worse, as the settings are in either German or English, only listeners fluent in both will be unfazed by the absence of translations.

Take the Drei Lieder, Op 22. The first song, the glorious ‘Was du mir bist’, cheekily recycled in the Suite Korngold wrote for Paul Wittgenstein, is overtly melodic. Its successor is more speculative in manner, albeit less so than the virtually Expressionist Op 18 sequence. An upbeat closing number soars stratospherically…but why? Though Carroll assures us of the composer’s singular ability to reflect the mood of a poetic text, most will be none the wiser. Korngold’s last song, the ‘Sonett für Wien’, refashions a theme from Escape Me Never, his final Warner Brothers score. It’s wide-ranging in every sense, a tribute to the city that meant everything to him but which sadly failed to respond in kind after the Second World War.

Strongly recommended and an important step in the composer’s rehabilitation.

— David Gutman

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold (May 29, 1897 – November 29, 1957) was an Austrian-born composer and child prodigy, hailed as a genius in early 20th-century classical music. He gained early fame for his operas, particularly Die tote Stadt (1920), before fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria in the 1930s. In Hollywood, Korngold became a pioneer of film music, composing lush, romantic scores for films like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), which won him an Academy Award. He wrote scores for 16 Hollywood films in all, and is considered one of the founders of film music, along with Max Steiner and Alfred Newman.

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Konrad Jarnot (born 1972) is an English baritone. Trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and later with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, he gained international recognition after winning First Prize at the ARD International Music Competition in 2000. Jarnot has performed at leading venues and festivals across Europe, collaborating with major orchestras and conductors. Equally active in opera and Lied, his repertoire spans Mozart to contemporary works. He has released numerous CDs and appeared on European radio networks. Since 2009, he has served on the faculty of the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf.

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Adrianne Pieczonka (born 2 March 1963) is a Canadian soprano acclaimed for her interpretations of Wagner, Strauss, Verdi and Puccini. She has performed leading roles at major houses including the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera, Royal Opera House and La Scala, as well as at Salzburg and Bayreuth festivals. A Grammy nominee and Juno Award winner, she has enjoyed a distinguished recording and concert career. Pieczonka is an Officer of the Order of Canada and was named Kammersängerin in Austria. In addition to her performing career, she is a dedicated educator and Chair in Voice at the Glenn Gould School.

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