Sopranistin Rachel Harnisch

Gar dicht gesät sind sie ja nicht, die Aufnahmen eines der wohl aufregendsten Liedzyklen der Musikgeschichte. Paul Hindemith hatte sein „Marienleben“ nach Gedichten von Rainer Maria Rilke 1923 geschaffen und 1948 revidiert. Er wollte den Gesang enger an den Text und die Klavierstimme anpassen und den Zyklus stilistisch einheitlicher gestalten. Genau in letzterer Version hat Naxos dieses schwierig zu singende Wunderwerk an der Schnittstelle von Expressionismus zu Impressionismus, changierend zwischen straffer Form und irdischer Sinnlichkeit mit zwei idealen Künstlern aufgenommen. Entstanden ist die Aufnahme im Mai 2014 im Radiostudio DRS in Zürich.
Die große Überraschung der CD ist die Schweizerin Rachel Harnisch, die auf Anhieb wohl die neue Referenz des Marienlebens vorgelegt hat. Frau Harnisch verfügt über einen expansionsfähigen lyrischen Sopran mit Spinto-Anflügen. Der in den verschiedenen Stimmungen der 15 Lieder farbenvoll und bisweilen dramatisch rauschhaft aufblühende Sopran leuchtet warm und cremig. Bruchlos führt Harnisch die Stimme von der quellklaren Tiefe bis hin zu wunderbar luxuriösen in der Kuppel gesungene Höhen. Sperrige Intervallsprünge und vokale Klippen der Partitur meistert sie voller Eleganz und ganz in einen natürlichem Stimmfluss eingebunden. Trotz der stets in Wohlklang geformten Gesangslinie leidet darunter die Textverständlichkeit nicht. Sowohl die Dramatik in der „Rast auf der Flucht nach Ägypten“, die narrative Konkretisierung in der „Hochzeit zu Kana“ als auch elegischen Verse in den letzten Liedern rund um den Tod Marias fasst Harnisch in musikalische Art Deco Juwelen, ohne den übergeordneten Bogen aus den Augen zu verlieren. Stupend. Liedkunst, die keine Vergleiche zu scheuen braucht.
Ihr Opernrepertoire reicht von der Pamina, der Figaro Gräfin bis hin zur Antonia in Hoffmanns Erzählungen und der Emilia in der Sache Makropoulos. Sie war wohl ein Liebling des späten Claudio Abbado, der sie als Marzelline im Fidelio mit Jonas Kaufmann holte, und als Solistin bei den Salzburger Festspielen 2012 (Schuberts Es-Dur Messe, Mozarts Waisenhausmesse) engagierte. Außerdem hat er mit ihr Pergolesis Stabat Mater und dessen Messa di San Emidio eingespielt.
Begleitet wird Rachel Harnisch von Jan Philip Schulze, der für einen straff expressiven, erzählerisch gelaunten Klavierpart sorgt. Die in vier deutlich voneinander getrennte Gruppen angelegten Lieder verlangen dem Pianisten ebenso wie der Sopranistin einiges an technischer Kunst ab. Das Klavier umkreist und schmückt den vokalen Part in wilden Variationen, mit eigensinnigen Ornamenten und auch dissonanter Kommentierung. Schulze ist der Sängerin ein ebenbürtiger Partner, mit der Einschränkung, dass er das Pedal teils doch weniger exzessiv einsetzen hätte können. Da hätte er sich doch die eine oder andere Anleihe beim knackigeren Spiel Glenn Goulds nehmen können, der die erste Fassung des Zyklus beispielhaft mit Roxolana Roslak eingespielt hat.
Die neue Aufnahme insgesamt ist eine willkommene und qualitätsvolle Bereicherung der Hindemith-Diskographie, dessen Marienleben-Lieder es mit den besten von Hugo Wolf aufnehmen können.
Dr. Ingobert Waltenberger

Paul Hindemith’s song cycle Das Marienleben or The Life of Mary was considered, even by the composer himself, as possibly the best work he had ever written...quite an accomplishment in an oeuvre that includes his seven string quartets and the operatic masterpiece Mathis der Maler. But although he was initially very proud of the original 1923 version, he later became somewhat dissatisfied because he felt the vocal line was not quite as well related to the text or the piano part, so a quarter-century later, while living in America, he reworked the cycle into what he considered its definitive form.

This 1948 edition is the one recorded here, although a little poking around the Internet has turned up a number of recordings of both versions, including a double-CD set on Koch International Classics in which soprano Judith Kellock performs both. Probably the most famous, or at least well-publicized, version of the earlier version is the Columbia/CBS recording by soprano Roxolana Roslak and pianist Glenn Gould. But the point I am making is that there are many fine recordings of this cycle in both incarnations.
I won’t pretend that pianist Schulze—or almost any other pianist in any recording of this cycle—comes close to the remarkable style that Gould exhibited in his recording. Few, if any, pianists played with the kind of X-ray clarity that Gould did, in which ever finger strike on the keyboard seemed to have equal force and thus equal expression. Jan Philip Schulze plays with a lovely, somewhat soft quality, coaxing rather than commanding the notes under his fingers. But in addition to the musical changes Hindemith made in the score, this performance is much brisker, taking only 65 minutes to Gould’s 79, and this tighter binding of the music results in a much more dynamic performance. An excellent example is the second song, “Die Darstellung Mariä im Tempel,” in which the duo of Roslak and Gould walk through it at a measured pace whereas Harnisch and Schulze give a much more dynamic and dramatically inflected reading.
Both singers, incidentally, had/have fine voices of different types. Roslak’s voice was very bright in timbre with a pleasant but noticeable flicker-vibrato. Harnisch’s voice also has a natural vibrancy, but she can control it better, sometimes letting it ride on the breath and sometimes draining the voice of vibrato for interpretive effect. Her voice is also creamier in quality than Roslak’s. Some of the impact of the two recordings is also due to the sound quality. As usual, Gould demanded a crisp, clean sound with minimal room sound around him and the singer, whereas the present recording has rather more reverb. This, as I’ve pointed out many times in the course of my reviewing, is a modern-day fetish that most classical listeners apparently like and approve of, but which I find detrimental to my enjoyment of almost any kind of music. Nonetheless, one cannot punish the artists or the high quality of their interpretation for the engineering.
As mentioned earlier, there are several fine recordings of this song cycle available, yet oddly the two most highly praised versions are by sopranos with edgy and rather unattractive voices, Maya Boog on CPO and Soile Isokoski on Ondine. Harnisch is clearly their equal as an interpreter—listen to the quicksilver changes of mood and inflection in the rapid song “Rast auf der Flucht nach Ägypten”—and has a much more beautiful voice than either. I slightly prefer Marita Viitasolo’s pianism in the Ondine recording, which is almost as clear and pungent as Gould’s, but again, this might be due to the clearer, less goopy sonics on the earlier disc. Schulze is clearly an excellent pianist, and he plays very well in this performance, but his instrument’s sound is too recessed at times.
My own personal proclivity is towards soprano Cato Brink and pianist Maria Bergmann (SWR Music 10327) as the best of the 1923 versions and this recording as the best of the 1948 revisions. Some critics feel that Hindemith’s later revisions of his earlier works were somewhat misguided, and that the original version of this song cycle had some very good things in it that were lost in his desire to “unify” the music more strongly. One could spend some time enumerating all the changes, most of which are explained in Paul Conway’s excellent liner notes. Entirely new versions were written of No. 3, “Mariä Verkündigung,” and No. 7, “Geburt Christi” (The Birth of Christ), the rest undergoing smaller changes except for No. 12, The Calming of Mary with the Resurrected One, which remained the same. One such revision came in the sixth song, “Verkündigung über die Hirten” (Annunciation of the Shepherds), where Hindemith made the final section “majestic and celebratory, anticipating the events of the next song.”
One of the most difficult songs, No. 9 “Von der Hochzeit zu Kana,” contains several dissonances and huge vocal leaps. Harnisch sings them as if they were in the middle of her voice and not difficult at all. She possesses the kind of technique and command of legato that was once a hallmark of singers of the so-called “Golden Age,” the period between 1900 and 1928 when great singers of all rangers proliferated with just such virtues. In addition to all her vocal gifts, she also has fine, clear diction, in my view a prerequisite for a truly great singer. This, then, is a truly great recording, possibly a new benchmark for this sometimes underrated cycle.

Lynn René Bayley