Mozart's 250th birthday in 2006 brought forth several cycles of his songs for voice and piano, generally regarded as the most obscure segment of his output. Taken together, these recordings have accomplished something of a rehabilitation of the repertoire, initially dismissed because Mozart for the most part did not set texts by the greats of German poetry. The songs come from all the phases of his career, from preadolescence up to the Masonic circles he frequented in the years before his death. There are various ways to present them, beginning with the question of whether to have a single singer or divide them between a male and female.They may be presented as essentially personal documents, springing from the everyday circumstances of Mozart's life. Annotator Sylvain Fort (the notes are in French and English) points to this way of listening to the songs. But the real attraction is the pair of young singers, Belgian-English soprano
Sophie Karthäuser and German baritone
Stephan Loges. The division of labor between them is very nicely done, with
Karthäuser's playfulness making an effective contrast with
Loges' soberer, subtler presentation in the more ambitious pieces. To
Karthäuser go songs like Der Alte, K. 517 (CD 1, track 9), where she hams up the portrayal of an old woman without going over the line, and the sexy Die Verschweigung, K. 518. Each Mozart set seems to include songs on the periphery of the repertoire; here the role is filled by the Masonic cantata Die ihr des unermeßlichen Weltalls, K. 619, an underrated piece, to be sure, but one very different in kind from the rest of the material and an odd choice to open the program. Accompanist
Eugene Asti keeps a very low profile, appropriately so given the simplicity of the piano parts. Overall this is a cycle that can stand with any of the other Mozart song recordings on the market, and it's especially recommended for singers interested in these largely unfamiliar items and in ways of putting them across with personality. Song texts are given in the original language (mostly German, but also Italian or French), French, and English.