Ruth Leon recommends… Die Schone Mullerin – Alinde Quartett with Daniel Johannsen
Ruth Leon recommendsDie Schone Mullerin – Alinde Quartett with Daniel Johannsen
I have no timely reason to recommend this short video to you except that it’s beautiful and wonderfully well played and sung by a young quartet and singer. My friend Debra Ayers sent me this excerpt from Schubert’s songcycle Die schöne Müllerin, rearranged for voice and string quartet by composer/singer Tom Randle, himself a trained composer and conductor, who has had a long singing career as a tenor.
This is the first and the only arrangement for voice and string quartet. And what better time to present this arrangement to the world than on the 200th birthday of Schubert’s immortal masterpiece.
Schubert composed this song cycle in 1823 at a low time in his life when he was deeply depressed and in hospital with a violent recurrence of the syphilis which was to kill him five years later.
Revitalised by the poems of his friend Wilhelm Müller Seventy-seven Poems from the Papers of a Traveling French Horn Player) he composed what became the first ever cycle of 20 art songs, known as Die schöne Müllerin.
The tenor, Daniel Johannsen, who has performed the cycle countless times since the 1990s, and the young Italian-American Alinde Quartet have found a composer who could hardly be better suited to the recomposition of this amazing work.
American-born Tom Randle’s tenor voice has taken him to the world’s greatest opera houses and festivals (such as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Glyndebourne and Aix-en-Provence). Thanks to his many talents and dual perspective, he was able to provide the vocal-instrumental quintet with a tailor-made version, which, according to current findings, is the first and the only arrangement for voice and string quartet.
‘The first and only arrangement for voice and string quartet’? I think not, as anyone who was present at the final performance of this year’s Aldeburgh Festival on Sunday 25th June will attest. Roderick Williams performed his own arrangement with the Carducci Quartet, and what a wonderful achievement that was. Quite apart from Williams’ superb rendition of the vocal part, a masterclass in the singing of German Lieder, it was evident that he has a profound understanding not only of Schubert’s vocal works, but also of his chamber works for strings. The scoring of this version was exquisitely subtle, and the combination of Williams’ warm and supple voice and these beautifully deployed strings was both gorgeous and profound. To my surprise, what promised to be at least a very interesting experiment metamorphosed into a deeply moving experience. I hope they will record it!
Daniel Johannsen is one of the three or four best Bach tenors I have ever heard.