Album Preview: Schubert, Schwanengesang

Schubert, Schwanengesang. Photo / Supplied

Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis's new Schwanengesang completes a journey begun with their 2009 Winterreise and last year's Die Schone Mullerin.

The 14 Lieder of the composer's "swansong" were put together by a publisher after Schubert's death. Schwanengesang may not have the underpinning narrative of Winterreise or Schone Mullerin, but there is ample compensation in its emotional intensity. It has become something of a window into the composer's soul.

As Gavin Plumley notes in the CD booklet, it "confirms much of the now prevalent mythology around Schubert: a misunderstood Romantic, contradictory, sexually ambiguous and ultimately evasive".

Mark Padmore is an eloquent spokesman for the art he understands so well. He talks of searching out the poetry in the music and the words; he feels that his partnership with Paul Lewis benefits from the pianist's own profound engagement with the literature of his instrument.

You can hear all this in the opening Liebesbotschaft. Padmore is subtle, sometimes risking a near-whisper; when Lewis's piano is not a rippling shaft of light, its bass lines elegantly wind around Padmore's beautifully sculpted melody.

The well-known Standchen is a miracle of observation, its moments of full bloom all the more effective bursting from comparative spareness, exquisitely caught in this Harmonia Mundi recording.

The heart of the song-cycle lies in six Heinrich Heine settings, setting off with the stark drama of the unhappy Atlas holding up the sky to the rumble of Lewis's augmented chords.

After this, Ihr Bild is a transparently simple love song, deliciously pointed by Padmore.

Der Doppelganger chills, perhaps more so, sung by a tenor. One shivers at the misty isolation of the town in Die Stadt, while the blithe tunefulness of Das Fischermadchen seems grimly ironic, considering Schubert was dying.

Generous extras include Auf dem Strom, with impressive horn obbligato from Richard Watkins and the humbler Die Sterne. Here, when Padmore sings of the stars gazing gently into the face of the patient sufferer, edging his tears with light, one feels the real presence of a composer who transmuted his personal tragedies into a universal solace.

Stars: 5/5

Verdict: "A superb Schubertian swansong."