Judith Fa, Sabine Devieilhe, sopranos; Stéphane Degout, baritone; Ensemble Pygmalion; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)
Franz Schubert, master melodist and progenitor of the song cycle, never wrote for the theater with success, producing scores for singspiels, operas and incidental music that collect dust on the shelf.
With the new concept album “Mein Traum,” the conductor Raphaël Pichon, working with Ensemble Pygmalion, the baritone Stéphane Degout and the sopranos Judith Fa and Sabine Devieilhe, creates an operatic Schubert pastiche using found materials. Excerpts from his opera “Alfonso und Estrella,” the oratorio “Lazarus” and the “Unfinished” Symphony find new dimension alongside arias by Schumann and Weber.
A dreamlike narrative Schubert wrote down in 1822, one that sums up his song cycles with startling concision, provides the plot: “With a heart full of infinite love for those who spurned that love, I wandered.”
The album feels more like a ghostly mosaic or a mirage — evanescent, bewitching, fragmentary — than an exact telling of that story. For unity, Pichon organizes the program with an ear for instrumental timbres. Dusky horns flow from a Weber aria into the “Unfinished” Symphony’s Andante. Harrowing woodwinds wend throughout the album, and the pairing of bassoon and brass lends it a mournful glow.
The Pygmalion players, adroit in shifting styles, summon graciousness for Schubert and flair for the more theatrically astute composers. Degout, as the protagonist, sings with a vigorous, taut, darkly burnished tone. For her single assignment, Devieilhe somehow transforms Schubert’s overexposed “Ave Maria” into an aria of emotional, rather than spiritual, absolution — allowing the wanderer, finally, to rest. OUSSAMA ZAHR
