Given Christine Schäfer’s wide-ranging repertoire, this mixing of 17th-century English and 20th-century American songs is no surprise. Everything about this recital hangs together without strain – even the gear changes between Purcell and Crumb and the Shakespearean quotes spoken by a boy’s voice, sometimes given a rather sinister quality through electronic treatments. (Beware the forte chord 16 seconds into the first whispered track, especially if you are listening on earphones.)

Notwithstanding that most of the Purcell pieces are drawn from theatrical contexts, here and there I found Schäfer’s delivery just a tad too grand operatic. That point of personal taste aside, these are fine accounts. Her exemplary clarity of tone and diction, and her emotional commitment to both composers, make for a powerful recital.

Crumb’s Three Early Songs (1947) setting Southey and Sara Teasdale, and Apparition (1979) drawing on Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d are atmospheric and affecting. Schneider’s playing is incisive yet sensitive and responsive, no less so when using amplified piano for Apparition.

Barry Witherden

 It’s easy to divide the evolution of Western music into arbitrary historical periods, but more useful to find links between kindred spirits that reach across the centuries. That’s the message of Christine Schäfer’s disc that juxtaposes songs by Henry Purcell and George Crumb. If a meeting of minds between England’s first great composer and one of America’s most idiosyncratic experimental voices at first seems an unlikely gambit, then Schäfer reaches inside this material to uncover connections that are wholly convincing. A melancholy lyricism haunts both composers, while a malleable approach to rhythm helps shake off the same old same old melodic frames.
The first part of the disc intersperses Crumb’s moderately Coplandesque Three Early Songs (1947) with Purcell favourites like “Sweeter than Roses” and “Music for a While”. The sovereign authority of Schäfer’s voice and the intensity of her presence makes for a seamless narrative, and the clarity of her diction and innate dramatic sensibility revitalise the Purcell works. The disc ends with a complete performance of Crumb’s Walt Whitman-inspired Apparition – Elegiac Songs and Vocalises (1979). The extended piano techniques Crumb deploys – the first section has eerie strumming as the inside of the piano becomes a mutant guitar – and his deconstruction of Whitman texts into onomatopoeic sounds builds bridges between music and text rather than offering a “setting” in the traditional sense. Readings from Shakespeare sonnets are placed between the Crumb and Purcell songs but have been given an overlay of electronic distortion – a redundant and puzzling addition to an otherwise intellectually astute and flawlessly performed disc.

 

 

As everyone by now must know, Schaefer has a heckuva voice: pure, round, perfectly placed, and technically fluent for everything from Purcell to Berg.  When she is expressive as well, she is one of the world's greatest singers, and she is certainly that here.  Indeed, it is her highly emotional, intense performances of the Purcell songs that wed them so well to the Crumb.

 

 

 

"For me, there's no such thing as early music or new music," Christine Schäfer remarks in a mission-statement sleeve note for her new album, Apparition - one of the most startling recital discs of recent years. Ever the maverick, Schäfer has elected to place music by Henry Purcell (1659-1695) and George Crumb (1929-) side by side. The album's title comes from its closing item, Crumb's 1979 cycle, a death-haunted setting of Walt Whitman for soprano and prepared piano. Schäfer and her pianist, Eric Schneider, build towards it by interweaving songs about love and mortality by both composers, and you're repeatedly struck by similarities in the exacting way each responds to words and in the flexible sensuousness of their vocal writing. Purcell sounds shockingly modern throughout, while Crumb comes over as so uniquely timeless that you end up abandoning all those epithets such as "avant garde" or "modernist" that usually apply to his music. In blazing voice, Schäfer sings everything as though her life depended on it, and, in Apparition itself, gives one of the greatest performances of her career.

 

 

Christine Schäfer's new disc, 'Apparition', juxtaposes the songs of Henry Purcell and George Crumb, punctuated by readings from Shakespeare's sonnets. It's a fascinating idea and makes for a rewarding listen. Lavishly produced, the card box is contained within a frosted plastic sleeve, the art work shows Schäfer among the bones of dinosaurs. In her programme note she writes with a disarming lack of pretentiousness - 'here I am standing in a sort of wedding dress in the midst of bones!' The whole enterprise is also prevented from becoming eccentric by the seriousness with which she and pianist Eric Schneider approach their performances, and the high quality of their interpretations.

Schäfer tells us she's often placed Purcell and Crumb together in concert programmes and the combination works extremely well; the Purcell comes across as relevant and modern and the melodiousness of much of Crumb's writing is accentuated. Although Schäfer admits that it's up to the listener to re-programme the order on the disc if he or she sees fit, the running sequence she has worked out with Schneider strikes me as highly effective.

The disc gets its name from Crumb's 1979 'Elegiac Songs and Vocalises' for soprano and amplified piano – a substantial 25 minute work which gives Schäfer a chance to display her interpretative art to the full. The songs themselves are atmospheric and haunting. The first, for example, starts with a strange, ethereal strumming against which Crumb pits a meandering vocal line. The sometimes slightly chilly beauty of Schäfer's voice – she has an uncanny way of removing the vibrato – suits this perfectly. She not only throws herself fully into the songs, but also rises to the challenges of the vocalises.

As the work progresses, the line between the songs themselves and the vocalises seems to blur. The fearful 'Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet' turns into the wordless 'Invocation' and the frantic 'Approach strong deliveress'. The final vocalise – 'Death carol' ('song of the nightbird') – is a bizarre evocation of bird song, introducing the remarkably bleak 'Come lovely and soothing death' and a repeat of 'The night in silence under many a star'. Crumb's use of the piano is consistently inspired, creating a whole world of sounds, conjured up expertly by Schneider. In anything less than a totally committed performance, this could fall flat. Schäfer gives it her all though and the result is an engrossing performance of a fascinating work.

The rest of the disc is made up from some more familiar Purcell songs, interspersed with Crumb's romantic and highly melodic Three Early Songs (1947) and readings of extracts from Shakespeare's sonnets read by young Sebastian Carewe. His voice is subjected to some strange sampling in what's maybe the only slight miscalculation on the disc, although these little interjections do serve to bind the musical numbers together.

Schäfer's way with the Purcell is every bit as successful. She reinvigorates many of these songs so we can hear afresh how consistently inspired the composer was in this medium. She and Schneider give a wonderfully responsive rendition of 'From rosy bow'rs', for example, and the way Schäfer points the text and reacts to Purcell's setting, brimming with ideas, is refreshing and moving (listen to her at 'Ah! Let the sound of music tune my voice').  Although her English is quite superb, there's something about her pronunciation which prevents it from sounding too 'English'; it makes for direct, unmediated communication. The final Purcell number is a particularly affecting performance of 'Dido's lament'.

This might not be a conventional vocal recital, but it makes for a fascinating and refreshing experience. I have nothing but admiration for Schäfer, Schneider and Onyx in taking such an interesting diversion off the beaten path.

 

 

 

"...feels like a labour of love...I don't know quite how to describe the cumulative effect of this carefuly planned project... As a seqence it becomes an unforgettable journey. It's beautiful, often seriously moving.." 

 

 

A heart , a skeleton, a disembodied whisper, a shiver of amplifed piano strings swept by a hand. Christine Schaefer and Eric Schneider's unsettling recital of songs by Henry Purcell and George Crumb begins with a child's voice and a shred of a Shakespeare sonnet, setting the scene for a forensic examination of obsessive love. Odd as some of Schneider's Purcell realisations are, they and Schafer's highly stylized singing quickly bridge the three-century gap between the interpolated composers, highlighting the peculiar morbidity of the imagery. Divinely creepy.

 

 

Schäfer’s earlier Onyx release, a challenging reading of Schubert’s Winterreise, was presented in an aptly bleak white cover. Its successor is equally imaginative, interleaving songs by Henry Purcell and George Crumb with whispered lines from Shakepeare’s sonnets. The sleeve shows Schäfer posing among dinosaur bones; a semitransparent case renders the image ghostly. Pretentious? No. The Purcell sits well beside three early Crumb songs and Apparition, his 1979 settings of Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. The subjects of life and death are addressed in ways direct, succinct, intimate, moving. Schäfer offers a fresh, unrestrained approach.