Markus Schäfer & Tobias Koch - Berger & Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin (2015)

Tracklist
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01. Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 11: I. Des Müllers Wanderslied
02. Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 11: II. Müllers Blumen
03. Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 11: III. Am Bach
04. Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 11: IV. Am Maienfeste
05. Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 11: V. Vogelgesang von der Müllerin Fenster
06. Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 11: VI. Der Müller
07. Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 11: VII. Rose, die Müllerin
08. Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 11: VIII. Müllers trockne Blumen
09. Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 11: IX. Des Baches Lied
10. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: I. Das Wandern
11. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: II. Wohin?
12. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: III. Halt!
13. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: IV. Danksagung an den Bach
14. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: V. Am Feierabend
15. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: VI. Der Neugierige
16. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: VII. Ungeduld
17. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: VIII. Morgengruss
18. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: IX. Des Müllers Blumen
19. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: X. Tränenregen
20. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XI. Mein!
21. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XII. Pause
22. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XIII. Mit dem grünen Lautenbande
23. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XIV. Der Jäger
24. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XV. Eifersucht und Stolz
25. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XVI. Die liebe Farbe
26. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XVII. Die boese Farbe
27. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XVIII. Trockne Blumen
28. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XIX. Der Mueller und der Bach
29. Die schöne Müllerin, Op.25, D.795: XX. Des Baches Wiegenlied

It all began with a musical parlor game. In the Berlin home of Privy Councilor Friedrich August von Staegemann in autumn of 1816, a group of young art-lovers put on a brief play with interspersed songs. It told the story of how Rose, the “lovely maid of the mill”, is courted by three men: a young miller, a gardener and a hunter. The latter eventually succeeds in winning her heart.

A number of songs were improvised for the occasion, based on poems some of the participants had written. The group of friends eventually wished to have those spur-of-the-moment songs replaced with true musical settings so turned to Berlin composer Ludwig Berger, who selected ten pieces and published corresponding settings in 1818 under the title Songs from the Liederspiel “Die schöne Müllerin".

In accordance with the Lied aesthetic en vogue in the early 1800’s, Berger set most of the poems as songs containing several stanzas of equal length. Five of the ten texts Berger set to music were poems by Wilhelm Müller. Born in 1794, it is no wonder that Müller took up the role of the miller-lad in the parlor song game.

Schubert only set twenty of Müller’s twenty-five poems. Three particularly extended numbers with many stanzas would have inserted too much delay into his interpretation designed to lead straight to the miller-lad’s bitter, mortal end.

Markus Schäfer and Tobias Koch have intensely studied the performance practice of Schubert’s time. However, their take on Berger’s and Schubert’s Lieder is not intended to be an act of purely reconstructive historicism, but rather a consciously subjective appropriation and transformation of a historical practice – far beyond merely ornamenting the original notes.