Composer: Franz Peter Schubert, Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn
Performer: Julian Prégardien, Martin Helmchen, Christian Tetzlaff, Florian Donderer, Rachel Roberts, Tanja Tetzlaff, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker
Number of Discs: 2
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Alpha
Catalogue: ALPHA748
Release: 2021
Size: 1.91 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
CD 01
01. Schubert: Abschied, D 957 No. 7
02. Schubert: Schwanengesang, D. 957: In der ferne
03. Schubert: Ständchen ‘Leise flehen meine Lieder’, D957 No. 4
04. Schubert: Schwanengesang, D. 957: Frühlingssehnsucht
05. Schubert: Schwanengesang, D. 957: Kriegers Ahnung
06. Schubert: Liebesbotschaft, D957 No.1
07. Schubert: Aufenthalt D957 No. 5
08. Schubert: Lieder ohne Worte, Op. 30: III. Adagio non troppo
09. Mendelssohn: Schwanengesang, D. 744
10. Schubert: Schwanengesang, D. 957: Das Fischermädchen
11. Schubert: Schwanengesang, D. 957: Am Meer
12. Schubert: Schwanengesang, D. 957: Die Stadt
13. Schubert: Der Doppelgänger D957 No. 13
14. Schubert: Schwanengesang, D. 957: Ihr Bild
15. Schubert: Schwanengesang, D. 957: Der Atlas
16. Mendelssohn F: Schwanenlied, Opus 1 No.1
CD 02
Schubert: String Quintet in C major, D956
01. I. Allegro ma non troppo
02. II. Adagio
03. III. Scherzo. Presto – Trio. Andante sostenuto
04. IV. Allegretto – Più allegro
Here are two works composed by Schubert at the very end of his short life. Schwanengesang (Swansong) was written in Vienna in the autumn of 1828. He died on 19 November at the age of thirty-one, and Die Taubenpost (Pigeon post), which closes the collection, is said to be his very last composition. The fourteen songs, by turns light-hearted, sombre and melancholy, are settings of poems by Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl. In the summer of the same year he composed his String Quintet in C major, scored for two cellos, which was not premiered until 1850, at the Vienna Musikverein. The power and orchestral dimensions of the work make it a pinnacle of nineteenth-century chamber music.
We could not have dreamt of a finer line-up of musicians to record these two Schubert monuments. Fanny Mendelssohn’s Schwanenlied (also to words by Heinrich Heine) completes the programme, along with Felix Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words No. 1 (for solo piano), composed a year after Schubert’s death and Schubert’s own setting of an unrelated Schwanengesang (D. 744, on a poem by Johann Senn).