Recorded in 1993, this Schubert recital captures Thomas Quasthoff at the brink of his sensational international successes. RCA slapped the title “Goethe-Lieder” on the disc, but three of these baker’s dozen songs are to texts by other poets, and there’s a nice mix of the familiar and the not-so-often heard. Quasthoff was to become an even more skilled interpreter of lied–witness his superb recent Schubert Schwanengesang/Brahms Four Serious Songs disc for DG–but on the whole these are very satisfactory performances. He makes the longer songs that can sometimes ramble adhere, and his understatement in some of the more dramatic narrative songs such as “Der Zwerg” and “Erlkönig” is refreshing in its directness. In the latter he avoids the overdramatization so often brought to it, excesses such as heard in Bryn Terfel’s downright hammy version on DG. Quasthoff’s also skilled in portraying the different characters, adopting an appropriate “voice” for the father, the son, and Death in “Erlkönig” and for the various personas in the Scene from Faust.
At times he and his accompanist can be a bit stiff but the pluses far outnumber the minuses. The opening “Der Sänger” scores through Quasthoff’s characterization and plush vocalism, and while his “Prometheus” won’t make you forget Hans Hotter’s, it’s gorgeously sung and conveys the bold defiance of the text. Some of the songs, such as “Auf dem Wasser zu singen”, always come off better when sung by a female voice; others, such as “Der Musensohn”, stubbornly remain earthbound when they should soar. The engineers don’t help much with overly close-up sound. Texts and translations are enclosed, but reverse the order of the second and third of the Harfenspieler songs.
