After only a handful of cameo appearances,
Matthias Goerne became a star with his Winterreise in Hyperion's legendary complete
Schubert song series.
Goerne's was a masterful performance with all the despair that even the most nihilistic listener could hope for.
Goerne achieved this by his emotionally nuanced interpretation, by his skillful use of dynamics, and mostly by his hooded tone, a dark and fuliginous tone that sounded as if
Goerne was already dead and singing from beyond the grave.
But even in German Romantic period, how many songs are there that call for a singing dead man? Even
Robert Schumann, the moodiest of Romantics, could only write so many songs about the death of faith, of hope, of love, and of life itself without turning in relief to the Romantic's other favorite subject: love in all its many splendored forms. But when
Goerne has to sing about anything but despair and death, he sounds as if bereft for all his emotional nuances and skillful dynamics. On this disc of
Schumann songs setting the poetry of
Goethe,
Heine,
Rückert,
Eichendorff, and other German Romantics,
Goerne sings with amazing technique and understanding interpretations, but his tone, his dark, fuliginous tone, makes everything sound dark, dim, and doomed. Decca's sound is cool, deep, and slightly opaque.