Die Singphoniker - Schubert: Complete Part Songs for Male Voices, Vol. 2 (1996)

When an ensemble seeks to record a complete body of work, there will inevitably be some works of lesser quality among the masterpieces. In the second volume of the Singphoniker's collection of Schubert's complete part-songs for male voices, there are the masterpieces -- the sublime early version of Gesang der Geister über den Wasser (D. 538) and the transcendent choral version of Sehnsucht (D. 656) -- and then there are the composition exercises that Schubert wrote for Salieri when he was in his early teens. And although the Singphoniker diligently blends its sweet voices in beautiful harmony and performs all of the songs with tender expressivity and a devotion verging on adulation, there is only so much it can do with Schubert's six settings of Schiller's Elysium, brilliant as composition exercises but less than entertaining as concert pieces. But when the work is a masterpiece, as in the deeply religious Salve Regina (D. 811) or the lovely ode to spring An den Frühling (D. 338), the Singphoniker's performances are as beautiful as the works themselves. Although one might wish to skip the composition exercises, the masterpieces on this recording are all one might wish for.