Search - Schubert, Holzmair, Cooper :: Die Schone Mullerin

"A story in song" is how Wolfgang Holzmair describes Schubert's first cycle, and indeed his performance creates a deeply moving narrative not only of external events but of internal change. He is mightily abetted by Imogene Cooper, a wonderful pianist who combines empathetic collaboration with a strong personality of her own. In the first song, they vividly suggest the deliberate gait and carefree spirit of a simple country lad in search of work at a mill. However, as his heart--and his poetic imagination--is set afire by the miller's daughter, and his naiveté gradually gives way to tenderness, yearning, ardor, hope, and, finally, anguish and despair, the performers make the transformation entirely believable. Holzmair's technique and diction are superb; his voice is singularly pure, beautiful, and expressive, and he uses its enormous range of color with great subtlety to give these predominantly strophic songs an extraordinary variety of nuance and inflection. With meticulous respect for the words as well as Schubert's instructions, and without resorting to word painting, he evokes the miller lad's reactions to his outward and inward experience in all their gradations of emotional intensity. --Edith Eisler