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   This mortal coil
   Thomas Quasthoff is beautifully harrowing in these songs of loss and
   death, says Tim Ashley
   Thursday August 02 2001
   The Guardian

   Schubert: Schwanengesang; Brahms: Four Serious Songs
   Quasthoff/Zeyen
   (DG)

   Thomas Quasthoff's latest recital disc should, perhaps, come with
   a health warning.  In opting to juxtapose the final vocal works of
   Schubert and Brahms, the great German bass-baritone has come up with
   a programme of such uncompromising intensity that on first listening,
   I had to pause at one point to recover a bit.

   Both works are reflections on the nature of mortality.  Schubert's
   last 14 songs to texts by Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine and Johann
   Seidl were written when he was terminally ill.  They are linked by
   themes of loss and separation, though the Heine settings press on
   into hallucinatory terror, in which disturbing imagery is linked to
   a musical extremism that peers forward to the expressionists.  Brahms's
   Four Serious Songs, meanwhile, were triggered by news of the final
   illness of Clara Schumann.  Brahms draws his texts from the Bible,
   investing the words with a personal resonance that reflects the sense
   of a life rendered meaningless, and - through St Paul's words, "If
   I have not love, I am as sounding brass" - equating lost love with
   lost inspiration.

   The dark, plush sound of Quasthoff's voice, and the low keys he uses
   for Schwanengesang, add to the sombre mood. His myriad inflections
   of colour allow him to create an almost operatic persona for each
   song.  The Rellstab settings are finely laced with irony and flashes
   of wit: the famous Serenade has a hectoring sexual urgency; In der
   Ferne (Far Away) fills a desolate void with erotic nostalgia; Ade
   (Farewell) winds down from bravado to regret. In the Heine songs, by
   contrast, Quasthoff conveys heightened extremities of both sense and
   sound. I can't think of anyone who equals him with Atlas's cry of "I
   bear the unbearable",' or who captures better the   erotic nastiness
   of the close of Am Meer ("My soul withers from desire - she poisoned
   me with her tears"). Unlike many performers, he integrates the final
   song, the single Seidl setting, Die Taubenpost, into the whole
   sequence, releasing grief in tenderness and allowing Schubert a
   final shaft of hope before the end.

   There is no such optimism in the Four Serious Songs, where the
   sparseness of the writing quashes any flashes of hope.  Quasthoff
   adopts a drained, bleached-out tone, only changing it very occasionally:
   a sudden moment of anger knocks you sideways at the start of the
   third song, while in the fourth, his voice, rising to its upper
   limits, floats and hovers briefly with seraphic radiance.  Throughout
   both works, Quasthoff's pianist, Justus Zeyen, matches him turn for
   expressive turn.  It is difficult, harrowing stuff - but both
   performances rank among the best available of either work.  The
   Brahms, in particular, is the finest version I know.

   Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

Janos Gereben/SF
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