Robin Tritschler performs song songs by Franz

Robin Tritschler performs song songs by Franz

You’d be forgiven for asking who exactly Robert Franz (1815-92) is. His songs ticked all the boxes by being superbly crafted and thought-provoking but also eminently singable and playable. Schumann, Mendelssohn and Liszt admired him, and echoes of his style can be heard in Brahms, Wolf and Pfitzner.

Our rating

4

Dr Natasha Loges

Published: March 22, 2019 at 11:52 am

COMPOSERS: Franz
LABELS: Hyperion
ALBUM TITLE: CDA 68128
WORKS: 77:24 mins
PERFORMER: Robin Tritschler (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: CDA 68128

You’d be forgiven for asking who exactly Robert Franz (1815-92) is. His songs ticked all the boxes by being superbly crafted and thought-provoking but also eminently singable and playable. Schumann, Mendelssohn and Liszt admired him, and echoes of his style can be heard in Brahms, Wolf and Pfitzner.

So why does no one sing Franz now? Unfortunately, he lived in Halle, far from the metropolises in which tastes were shaped. And more importantly, he stuck to writing miniatures at a time when a composer could only earn his/her stripes by composing monolithic symphonies, concertos and operas.

Franz deserves better, so this release is most welcome. Graham Johnson and Robin Tritschler offer a generous 47 songs (out of 279), conveying Franz’s full stylistic breadth in impressive poetry by figures like Heine, Eichendorff and Mörike. Tritschler’s gloriously sweet voice is perfect for these songs, if very occasionally under-energised. Johnson – that most sympathetic and imaginative of accompanists – weaves magic with colour, balance and timing. The liner notes are characteristically excellent, with useful short discussions of each song.

Song-lovers will enjoy hearing familiar words afresh, such as ‘Wonne der Wehmut’, ‘Rastlose Liebe’, ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’ and ‘Um Mitternacht’, texts made famous in settings by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Wolf. But in many songs, such as ‘Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen’, ‘Die Lotosblume’ and ‘Wie des Mondes Abbild’, they’ll get to discover a completely original, vastly underappreciated musical voice.

Natasha Loges

Dr Natasha Loges

Journalist and Critic, BBC Music Magazine

Natasha Loges is the head of postgraduate programmes and professor of musicology at the Royal College of Music. She is a regular critic for BBC Music Magazine and broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and BBC TV. Her research interests include German song, concert history, 19th-century performance practice and gender studies, with a particular focus on the lives and music of Brahms and the Schumanns. Her PhD, undertaken at the Royal Academy of Music, was titled 'Text and Context in Brahms's Lieder'. Her books include Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall: Between Private and Public Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Brahms and His Poets (Boydell, 2017), Brahms in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Musical Salon Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century (Boydell, 2019) and German Song Onstage (Indiana University Press, 2020).
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