Search - Franz [Vienna] Schubert, Gerald Moore, Aksel Schiøtz :: Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin

Schiotz: Possibly Definitive Schubert

10/23/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Any serious collector or singer will insist that the Schiotz/Moore recording of Die Schoene Mullerin be one you own. It is a must for any tenor preparing the Cycle for performance. You will forgive the audio quality after a few hearings. A definitive interpretation, if there can be one."

Do stars really count when a recording is definitive?

madamemusico | Cincinnati, Ohio USA | 09/10/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"More than 30 years ago I bought this performance on a Seraphim LP. I thought the interpretation interesting but the voice colorless and dry. Now I discover, by means of modern digital remastering, that it was the pressing and not the singer that was at fault. Schiotz' light, silvery tenor really shines in this recording, though the neophyte should be forewarned: Schiotz was a "cool" singer with a light, silvery voice. He did not lay into high notes or show off the voice itself in any way when he sang. He was a vocal artist, which is to say, he used the voice like an instrument and thought of it as such. He was also a warm and open communicator who conveyed a wealth of feeling just by the way he could shade or darken his voice.



Also, a word on Gerald Moore's accompaniments. They have sometimes been chided as being "way too fast" for this cycle, primarily by more modern listeners who have become used to hearing their Schubert sung in a slow, lugubrious manner. (Francisco Araiza's version of the song "Pause," for instance, is a minute and a half slower than Schiotz'.) But this is not consistent with either Muller's texts or Schubert's score, and one should not blame Moore: six years earlier, Schiotz began recording the cycle with a different pianist in most of the songs he left us, and the tempi were pretty much the same. This was his, or perhaps their (as a mutual agreement) view of the work, and it has endured.



Other tenors may have "more voice" to bring to the table, among them Araiza and Wunderlich, yet neither of those estimable tenors have really penetrated the heart of the words as Schiotz did. 26 years after he made this recording, Schiotz did an article on how to interpret these songs, and ended by saying "I am immodest enough to recommend my own recording even though it was made in 1945." And why not? "It still conveys how I feel about these songs," he said. And so it does."

Schiotz is the very Miller himself

ringleadr | Avery Island, LA USA | 09/09/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Over 30 years ago my college roommate, born in the Netherlands, introduced me to this recording, a treasured favorite of his family's in Europe. And so it has been for me ever since. Perhaps I can best sum up my high regard for this recording by saying that, whereas Fischer-Diskau's rendition of this cycle is for me the work of an exquisitely trained and sensitive artist, Schiotz is, quite simply, the Miller himself singing."