(arr. Guthrie)
Thomas Guthrie (vocal); Barokksolistene
Rubicon RCD1086 60:18 mins
Thomas Guthrie’s singular take on Schubert’s first great song cycle has evolved out of concert-hall experimentations implicating puppetry, piano accompaniments re-imagined for mixed instrumental ensembles and his doctoral research on the ornamentation of Schubert lieder. Perhaps you had to be there to get the most out of this decidedly radical rethink.
To newcomers on album, the almost visceral jolt (experienced at least initially) is soon followed by bewilderment: why tinker with a work that so incontestably ‘works’ already? This is especially puzzling when the interventions so often distract from the ineluctable unfolding of the narrative whose trajectory is so supremely focused when entrusted to voice and piano.
On subsequent hearings, however, while questions remain, they perhaps become less troubling; resistance surrenders to curiosity, and some of the ‘novelties’ prove revealing. Indeed, in spirit, the result is arguably not a million miles removed from an earlier ‘Liederspiel’ incarnation with
music by Ludwig Berger that, pre-Schubert, had enlivened a Berlin salon.
Configured as a string quartet with double bass and two guitars, the Barokksolistene enter into Guthrie’s reworking with predictably infectious gusto. The guitar-rich ‘Dankgesang an den Bach’ sounds like a shoo-in for a gemütlich evening in some Viennese wine stube, and the pizzicato underpinning of ‘Tränenregen’ beautifully sets up the teardrops and rain of the lyric.
But not everything is so felicitous – the garishly overcooked accompaniment to ‘Mit dem grünen Lautenbande’ disquiets, and while Guthrie’s pleasant tenor makes a good fit for the protagonist’s youthfulness (and in its unvarnished simplicity renders the final watery lullaby with haunting, consolatory pathos), across the entire cycle his expressive range is somewhat circumscribed.