Search - Franz [Vienna] Schubert, Michael Raucheisen, Julius Patzak :: Schubert: Die Schöne Müllerin

A legendary Schone Mullerin, and a must-listen for aficionad

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 04/18/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For seven decades the esteemed Austrian tenor Julius Patzak's wartime recording of Die Schone Mullerin has been extolled, and yet there is no review here at Amazon. To the modern ear, this CD presents undoubted detractions. Patzak sings so emotionally and with such wildly spontaneous rubato as to make some listeners squirm. His pitch, never absolutely sure, goes off when the singer becomes awash in feeling or finds himself too high and loud. But no one has ever sounded the depths of the miller's tragedy or raised it to such exalted heights as he did.



The source is a German radio broadcast in the dire year of 1943 (which itself may offend prospective buyers), and one suspects that it was captured on early tape since Preiser's reissue has no surface hiss, ticks, or pops. Patzak's voice is too closely miked, but except for a certain hardness in loud passages, there's minimal shatter or overload. The piano is also captured clearly, and accompanist Michael Raucheisen is fully in sync with the singer. In keeping with his generous artistic personality, the beloved Patzak sings out with almost operatic force, in marked contrast with such refined, controlled contemporaries as Gerhard Husch and Aksel Schotz. Their ideal of cultivated emotion didn't aim for the wrenching climaxes and heart-on-sleeve delivery of Patzak. He was only 45, but when he soon came to do Fidelio with Furtwangler and Das Lied von der Erde with Bruno Walter in the early Fifties, the voice was losing its stability even as Patzak's artistry was deepening.



I won't say any more about this, the wildest ride Schubert's song cycle will ever receive, no doubt. It's extreme but also extremely moving. Each listener will have to judge the rest for himself."