CD ECM Records Rosamunde Quartett - Othmar Schoeck: Notturno

2009

Rosamunde Quartett
Andreas Reiner - vioara
Diane Pascal - vioara
Helmut Nicolai - viola
Anja Lechner - violoncel
Christian Gerhaher - bariton

Othmar Schoeck - Notturno (für Streichquartett und eine Singstimme), op. 47

Although being generally acknowledged as one of the leading composers of his native Switzerland, Othmar Schoeck (1886–1957) has never acquired a stable reputation outside the German-speaking world. This is partly due to his strong focus on the sung word: His output comprises eight operas, some 400 songs and a couple of smaller works for instrumental forces. Moreover, Schoeck’s essentially late-romantic style was considered démodé after the second world war when the avant-garde was arguing for a more rational and emotionally restricted approach to composition. One of his most personal works is the “Notturno” for baritone voice and string quartet. Written between 1931 and 1933 it served as a personal confession after an unhappy extra-marital love affair. Its five movements set verses by German 19th-century-poet Nikolaus Lenau and by the great Swiss writer Gottfried Keller. The highly differentiated interpretation by baritone Christian Gerhaher – one of the most distinguished young German “Lied” singers and a former disciple of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – and the Rosamunde Quartett offers a strong plea for Schoeck’s expressive music and sheds an exciting light on his artistic preoccupation with the dark abysses of human existence.

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Diapason, Diapason d’or
Pizzicato, Supersonic

Notturno has nothing but perfectly singable vocal lines in a moody sea of string-quartet textures that fall vaguely into the Zemlinsky zone but also have their own distinctive harmonic profile. The performance is optimum. The Rosamunde Quartet finds expressive immediacy in what could often be heard as poetic ambiguity… Though Lenau’s verse is a bit flowery in a Biedermeier sort of way, Gerhaher treats it to an imaginative range of vocal color, but with a tone more yielding than Fischer-Dieskau’s. I could listen to him all day.
David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer

If anything can broaden interest in the art of Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck, it is this wonderful recording of his song cycle for baritone and string quartet. … The work represents Schoeck’s dark night of the soul – an act of introspection that expresses existential doubts in music of the most intimate lyricism. The intricacy with which Schoeck intertwines the voices, vocal and instrumental, is one of his supreme achievements. … Gerhaher, sensitively supported by the Rosamunde Quartet, proves himself a more-than-worthy successor, summoning many of Fischer-Dieskau’s interpretative qualities.
Andrew Clark, Financial Times

The work was championed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – and he could hardly wish for a better successor here than Christian Gerhaher: gentler, more intimate and less magisterial than Fischer-Dieskau, but with the same strong and impassioned musical intelligence. The Rosamunde Quartet play with both textural and structural clarity (especially in the 17-minute first movement), yet with a fragile, tremolous inner ardour which makes Schoeck’s obsessively reiiterated and transforming themes rise out of his troubled consciousness and are brought vividly in our own.
Hilary Finch, BBC Music Magazine

Notturno is quite a difficult piece for quartet and singer alike, but the performance could hardly be more confident and convincing. Gerhaher has proved himself many times in 19th Century lieder; the lovely tone and subtle shaping he brings to Schubert work well here. The quartet, named for Schubert’s Rosamunde, plays with the dark intensity this music needs. A fine recording, strongly recommended.
Althouse, Amercian Record Guide