This disc of early 20th century Viennese orchestral songs seems the perfect showcase for Eva Marton, whose recordings have been intermittently successful in conveying the sound of her voice. Listening to her Salome on Sony Classical for example, our ears are deluged by a vibrato so heavy it resembles a sine wave. However, her live performances reveal a high, bright, and powerful voice that rings out over the orchestra unfettered. It would appear that recording Marton’s voice requires judicious placing of microphones, and happily this is just what Hungaroton’s engineers have done for this unique and compelling program. Zemlinsky’s six songs (1910-13), set to poems of Maeterlinck, abound in the rich chromaticism typical of his style. Schoenberg’s six songs (1903-05) come from his pre-serial period and sound very similar to Gurrelieder in their opulent orchestration, highly idiosyncratic harmonic processes, and rapturous paeans to love. Franz Schreker composed his meditative Vom ewigen Leben to two poems of Walt Whitman dealing with eternal life. Marton sings with opulence and refined fire in all the above songs, wonderfully evoking their passion, gravity, and serenity; but she devotes special attention to Heliane’s aria, where she embodies the character’s rapture and sensuality, the voice becoming increasingly voluminous yet retaining its bright, shining quality. Marton’s radiant artistry is amply supported by John Carewe’s idiomatic readings of the orchestral scores, incandescently played by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, making this disc an alluring aural experience. [10/31/2000]
