My Soul, What Fear You? Lieder and arias by JS Bach, Eisler, Mahler, Pfitzner, Schubert, Schumann, R Strauss and Weill Christopher Purves (bass-baritone), Simon Lepper (piano) King’s College KGS0067 55:54 mins
Christopher Purves and Simon Lepper have designed an admirably ambitious programme with, one suspects, the help of Richard Stokes, Britain’s living encyclopedia of lieder and song. It’s not simply the range of the repertoire, which travels from Bach to Weill via Schubert, Schumann, Strauss and Hans Eisler, but the thematic links that bind these songs together – the imminence of last things, the prison cell as tomb and exile as a cultural death. Yet, My Soul, What Fear You?, the quotation from Hans Pfitzner’s setting of a monologue for the Protestant radical Jan Hus condemned to be burnt, gives this recital a shard of hope as well as its name.
Christopher Purves sings magnificently, spinning an enviable thread of legato through the narrative of each song. A consummate actor, too, with commanding diction, he invariably finds a distinctive colour and tone. There’s a sneer from Schubert’s gravedigger when recalling the dandies who fawned on the hand of the young beauty who died, restrained rage at the end of Mahler’s ‘Der Tamboursg’sell’, and the almost physical ache of exile in Eisler’s ‘L’automne californien’. And he meets the fearsome low D in Strauss’s ‘Im Spätboot’ without blinking!
Simon Lepper is a hand-in-glove partner throughout, coaxing gentle breezes from the piano and starting an avalanche of rocks to engulf Schumann’s treasure digger. Then there’s Gerard McBurney’s arrangement of Bach’s ‘Ich hab genug’ which borrows an accordion from 20th-century Berlin and adds flute, saxophone and guitar to make Bach with a sharp new bite.
Christopher Cook