Here's something you don't see every day: an exciting album of obscure Schubert songs. Although it looks like just another volume of yet another complete edition (specifically, Vol. 17 of Naxos' Deutsche Schubert Lied Edition), this effort by baritone
Detlef Roth and pianist
Ulrich Eisenlohr, devoted entirely to songs on poems by Schubert's Austrian contemporaries, is anything but a dreary slog through the composer's lesser achievements. In fact, it's wonderful.
Roth and
Eisenlohr lavish a rare depth of commitment and musical imagination on these songs, creating rich moods, vivid characters, and many very beautiful moments. Certainly, not every song on the album is great, but every performance on it is; there isn't a dull track in the bunch.
Roth's singing is warm, flexible, and clear, and he finds an impressive variety of inflection and color.
Eisenlohr is even better at the piano; his instincts for pacing, articulation, and style are perfect, and he takes absolutely nothing for granted. Together, the two breathe life into phrases, and indeed entire songs that would seem uninspired in lesser hands.
Aside from Die Allmacht, one of Schubert's better-known religious songs, the only even mildly familiar titles on the album are the very substantial opener Der Unglückliche, Die abgeblühte Linde, and An die Geliebte. Among the rarer items are Schubert's only spoken melodrama, Abscheid, understatedly delivered over a delicately shaped accompaniment, and Die Befreier Europas in Paris -- a hymn in praise of peace and liberation, and a charming artifact of the early nineteenth century.