Schubert: Schwanengesang / Christoph Prégardien, Andreas Staier

Franz Schubert

SCHWANENGESANG AND SONGS AFTER SEIDL

Christoph Prégardien: tenor | Andreas Staier: fortepiano (Christopher Clarke, 1996 after Conrad Graf 1827)

In January 1829, a good two months after Schubert's death, the Viennese music publisher Tobias Haslinger, with whom Schubert had worked very closely in the final years of his life, placed an advertisement in the Viennese press, in which he announced Franz Schubert's Schwanen-Gesang, 14 Lieder, "the final fruits of his noble power […], written in August 1828, shortly before his decease." Haslinger had given them the collective title of Schwanengesang. In reality there were two groups of songs: seven songs on texts by Ludwig Rellstab and six on texts by Heinrich Heine in a common manuscript of August 1828 along with a single Lied, Die Taubenpost, on a poem by his friend Gabriel Seidl (D 965 A). The Lieder do not form a single cycle, for each group appears complete in itself. In the Heine group are collected together all the songs Schubert composed on poems by Heine; the same almost applies for the Rellstab group of Lieder: apart from the Lieder in Schwanengesang the only Rellstab poems on which Schubert wrote songs were the large-scale song for voice, horn and piano Auf dem Strom (D 943), the strophic Lied Herbst (D 945), which survives as an album leaf for Heinrich Panofka, and the incomplete Lied Lebensmut.Die Taubenpost is perhaps Schubert's last Lied, possibly even his last complete composition of all (unless this applies to Der Hirt auf dem Felsen - both Lieder carry the same date: October 1828). The Viennese poet Gabriel Seidl, who was a friend of Schubert, was the source of a whole series of poetic texts that Schubert set to music between 1826 and 1828; some of these were solo Lieder, some were polyphonic songs.

TRACKLIST

1 F. Schubert Schwanengesang nr. 1 - VII (1828)
2 F. Schubert Schwanengesang nr. 1 - VII (1828)
3 F. Schubert Schwanengesang nr. 1 - VII (1828)
4 F. Schubert Schwanengesang nr. 1 - VII (1828)
5 F. Schubert Schwanengesang nr. 1 - VII (1828)
6 F. Schubert Schwanengesang nr. 1 - VII (1828)
7 F. Schubert Schwanengesang nr. 1 - VII (1828)
8 F. Schubert Schwanengesang nr. 1 - VII (1828)
9 Schwanengesang Nr. VIII - XIII D 957
10 Schwanengesang Nr. VIII - XIII D 957
11 Schwanengesang Nr. VIII - XIII D 957
12 Schwanengesang Nr. VIII - XIII D 957
13 Schwanengesang Nr. VIII - XIII D 957
14 Schwanengesang Nr. VIII - XIII D 957
15 Songs after Seidl (1804-1875)
16 Songs after Seidl (1804-1875)
17 Songs after Seidl (1804-1875)
18 Songs after Seidl (1804-1875)
19 Songs after Seidl (1804-1875)
20 Songs after Seidl (1804-1875)
21 Songs after Seidl (1804-1875)

2008 Challenge 72302