Schubert's Schwanengesang is here performed in a new English translation by Jeremy Sams: songs of love and songs of horror all the more eviscerating 'in the vernacular'. English versions of two other major songs—mini cantatas almost—from Schubert's final year complete the programme, Sophie Bevan performing Der Hirt auf dem Felsen and Auf dem Strom with obbligato contributions from Julian Bliss and Alec Frank-Gemmill. Between the completion of Winter Journey in October 1827 and his death, aged 31, in November 1828, he turned to two new poets, Ludwig Rellstab and Heinrich Heine, with a set of songs apiece. If Winter Journey has the richness of a novel told in song, then Swansong is more like a collection of short stories. Fourteen very different characters come in and out of focus, with little in common except their aloneness. Two other solitary figures—a lovelorn shepherd and a restless sea-voyager—are depicted in longer works, also from 1828, where a solo instrument partners the voice. Right up until the end, it seems, Schubert was experimenting with new ways to tell stories in song. And storytelling is to the fore in the new translations by Jeremy Sams performed here, which recreate the directness and immediacy of the poetry that inspired Schubert for English-speaking listeners. His most public tribute came with a setting of On the river, one of a bundle of poems the writer Ludwig Rellstab had sent to Beethoven, who in turn left them in his estate to Schubert. Seven other Rellstab settings form the first half of Swansong and find Schubert at his most illustrative and assured. The propulsive energy of Longing for spring builds a tender excitement, punctuated by fleeting moments of doubt, before finally giving way to the most famous tune Schubert ever wrote in Serenade. Other songs portray various incarnations of the archetypal romantic Wanderer, living on the margins of society. Defiance and dignity mingle with a torrent of emotion in My home. Most exhilarating of all is the perpetual motion of Leave-taking, a riding song, where the horse finally trots out of sight after six verses to clear the stage for a very different poet. Heinrich Heine may have been two years older than Ludwig Rellstab but he belonged to the future, used fewer words, and made them mean more. His lyrics are simple and artless on the surface but spiked with wit, cynicism and irony. And Schubert, too, sharpens his style. In Atlas, the wretched Titan of Greek mythology has never seemed more human, railing against his fate in music that as we now see it touches the worlds of Wagner and Verdi. The gloom is carried over into Her picture, which expresses a depth of sorrow that makes a stark contrast to the easy charm on display in The fisher maiden. Two more seascapes from a composer who never saw the sea follow, one hypnotic and obsessive, the other grief-stricken and embittered. The final, unexpectedly major chord of Doppelgänger is a mystery. Johann Seidl was no Heine, but his poem about a homing pigeon inspired a song that is, in its way, just as much of a miracle as Dopplegänger. A clarinet melody sets the scene; we are on top of a mountain with a broken-hearted shepherd. The clarinet mourns alongside him as he sings out his pain. But grief finally turns to hope, as quickly as a change in the Alpine weather. Schubert always was a shapeshifter, but never more so than in his last and greatest year. The music seems only more remarkable when we notice that the manuscript is dated October 1828. Schubert was by then standing on a precipice of his own, cared for by his brother Ferdinand, battling typhus and tertiary syphilis, and surely knowing he would not see another spring. Christopher Glynn © 2018.
