Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin

This recent reimagining of The Fair Maid of the Mill—there actually isn’t any good translation—with guitar quite than piano supporting the vocalist, may lead you to surprise if the composer was an early Nineteenth-century prototype of the trendy singer/songwriter. He wasn’t. Schubert was about 5 ft tall, obese, socially awkward, and famously unhealthy at self-promotion; he wasn’t showing at Vienna Kaffeehausen. But there’s one thing about listening to the 20 songs that comprise the cycle, supported by the chief instrumental voice of latest widespread music, that makes the narrative content material particularly potent. It’s been executed earlier than, by tenor Peter Schreier within the Seventies, however this new association by guitarist and composer David Leisner is more practical, partly as a result of the keys required for a baritone occur to be extra guitar-friendly. Michael Kelly’s gentle baritone is completely suited to each the lyrical and dramatic calls for of the fabric; the pathos of the penultimate tune, “Der Müller und der Bach,” is nearly insufferable. The brook—“der Bach”— will get the final phrase. The realistically scaled but rapid recording was produced by Judith Sherman, answerable for so many great classical recordings for half a century now.

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