Schubert, Prey - Die Schöne Müllerin [Denon 33CO-1072] {Japan 1986}

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Schubert, Prey - Die Schöne Müllerin [Denon 33CO-1072] {Japan 1986}

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Franz Schubert - Die Schöne Müllerin
Hermann Prey / Baritone - Philippe Bianconi / Piano
FLAC, EAC, LOG & CUE | Lossless Artwork | Size: 395 MB + Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Denon 33CO-1072 | Country/Year: Japan 1986
Genre: Classical | Hoster: FP/FF

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Schubert, Prey - Die Schöne Müllerin [Denon 33CO-1072] {Japan 1986}

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Schubert, Prey - Die Schöne Müllerin [Denon 33CO-1072] {Japan 1986}

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Schubert, Prey - Die Schöne Müllerin [Denon 33CO-1072] {Japan 1986}

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Die schöne Müllerin (op. 25, D. 795), is a song cycle by Franz Schubert on poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is the earliest extended song cycle to be widely performed. The work is considered one of Schubert's most important, and it is widely performed and recorded.

Die schöne Müllerin is performed by a pianist and a solo singer. The vocal part falls in the range of a tenor or soprano voice, but is often sung by other voices, transposed to a lower range. Since the story of the cycle is about a young man, the work is most often sung by men. The piano part bears much of the expressive burden of the work, and is only seldom a mere "accompaniment" to the singer.

A typical performance lasts around sixty to seventy minutes.

Müller's poems were published in 1820, and Schubert set most of them to music between May and September 1823, while he was also writing his opera Fierrabras. He was 26 years old at the time. Schubert omitted several of the poems, such as a prologue and an epilogue delivered by the poet. The work was published in 1824 under the title Die schöne Müllerin, ein Zyklus von Liedern, gedichtet von Wilhelm Müller, which means, "The lovely maid of the mill, a song cycle to poems by Wilhelm Müller".

The cycle is occasionally referred to as the "Müllerlieder," the Müller songs, a term used by the composer once in a letter. This is not especially useful nomenclature, since Schubert's later and equally celebrated song cycle Winterreise is also a setting of poems by Müller.

There are twenty songs in the cycle, around half in simple strophic form, and they move from cheerful optimism to despair and tragedy. At the beginning of the cycle, a young journeyman miller wanders happily through the countryside. He comes upon a brook, which he follows to a mill. He falls in love with the beautiful miller's daughter (the "Müllerin" of the title); she is out of his reach as he is only a journeyman. He tries to impress her, but her response seems tentative. The young man is soon supplanted in her affections by a hunter clad in green, the color of a ribbon he gave the girl. In his anguish, he experiences an obsession with the color green, then an extravagant death fantasy in which flowers sprout from his grave to express his undying love. (See Adelaide (Beethoven) for a similar fantasy.) In the end, the young man despairs and drowns himself in the brook. The last number is a lullaby sung by the brook. The question remains: is the brook really the miller's friend or is it a fiend, like Mephistopheles in the Faust legend, who leads the miller to his downfall and destruction? wikipedia

Hermann Prey (11 July 1929 – 22 July 1998) was a German lyric baritone. He is most famous for lieder and for light comic baritone roles in opera.

Hermann Prey was born in Berlin and grew up in Germany. He was scheduled to be drafted when World War II ended. He studied voice at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and won the prize of the Frankfurt contest of the Hessischer Rundfunk in 1952.

He began to sing in song recitals and made his operatic debut the next year in Wiesbaden. He joined the Staatsoper, where he sang until 1960. During his last years in Hamburg, he also made frequent guest appearances elsewhere, including the Salzburg Festival.

He sang frequently at the Metropolitan Opera between 1960 and 1970 and made his Bayreuth debut in 1965. Although he often sang Verdi early in his career, he later concentrated more on Mozart and Richard Strauss. Prey was well known for playing Figaro (Mozart and Rossini), but he played other Mozart roles at least equally often, particularly Papageno and Guglielmo. He also played, and recorded, the Count in The Marriage of Figaro. He is regarded by many as the best Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus operetta.

He was at home with comic opera Italian-style, displaying scenic intelligence, liveliness and hilarity. His virtuoso agility and great comic acting made him an obvious choice for numerous productions of Mozart's and Rossini's operas in the 1970s. In 1972 he performed as Figaro in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's television film of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Teresa Berganza as Rosina, Luigi Alva as Almaviva and conductor Claudio Abbado. He appeared alongside Fritz Wunderlich in the live televised version of Il Barbiere di Siviglia in its German translation, Der Barbier von Sevilla. He also portrayed Figaro in 1976 in Ponnelle's film of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.

Prey also sang operetta and performed on German television, becoming extremely popular with television audiences. He shared media-celebrity with Fritz Wunderlich until the latter's untimely death, often playing Papageno to Wunderlich's Tamino.

He is best remembered for his recitals, his first American recital having been given in 1956. He was a gifted interpreter of Schubert, as well as other Lieder (together with the German pianist Sebastian Peschko). He also appeared frequently in concert, particularly in the Bach Passions and Brahms' A German Requiem. A videotaped performance of Schubert's lieder-cycle Schwanengesang is available.

Prey possessed a clear, polished tone - darker and deeper-sounding than his slightly older contemporary Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but equally refined and equally capable of soaring into the tenor range without the smallest suggestion of vocal effort.

He recorded a multi-volume set for Phillips, tracing the history of the Lied from the Minnesänger to the twentieth century. In addition, he released numerous recordings of opera and song.

Unlike Fischer-Dieskau, Prey wisely limited his Wagner to the soft, high-baritone roles Wolfram and Beckmesser. He can be seen on video in the latter role, opposite Bernd Weikl.

Starting in 1982, he taught at the Musikhochschule Hamburg, and he wrote an autobiography which was translated as First Night Fever (ISBN 0-7145-3998-8).

In 1988, he directed a production of The Marriage of Figaro in Salzburg. His son Florian is also a baritone.

He died in Krailling, Bavaria.

For many years, Michael Endres was the pianist to Hermann Prey. wikipedia