Gramophone. September 2003 (Volume 81, Number 970).


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Peter Schreier: crystal clear
The inimitable tone and piercing intelligence of a great lieder tenor
Alan Blyth

Peter Schreier first came to my attention at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in a production of Così fan tutte given by the Hamburg Opera in 1966. The staging was an early example of German chic, and rather heartless, but Schreier stood out for his flawless assumption of Ferrando. It was about that time (1967) that he replaced Fritz Wunderlich, who had died the year before, at the Salzburg Festival as Tamino. His interpretation was so admired that it catapulted the Dresden tenor from a local singer of repute on to the international stage as the acknowledged successor to Wunderlich in Mozart.

Thereafter he sang and recorded almost all the major Mozart parts for tenor, perhaps most notably Belmonte for Karl Böhm and Tamino for Colin Davis (the latter role he has also recorded for Otmar Suitner and Wolfgang Sawallisch). He also won an award from the International Mozarteum Foundation in recognition of his efforts to promote the composer’s more rarely performed operas, several of which he has also recorded, including the title role in Lucio Silla.

Those who may have other versions of the complete operas, but want to hear Schreier’s skills as a Mozartian, may be drawn to a recital disc made around the time of that Salzburg début and just reissued by Berlin Classics. It reveals his voice in pristine condition, his technique at its most fluent (the runs in Belmonte’s arias, among the most taxing for tenor in all the opera, easily accomplished) and also that gift, present in all his work, for shaping words to music.

Childhood in Dresden
Schreier’s pre-eminent musicality stems from his training in the Dresden Kreuzchor, where he learnt the faultless musicianship that has held him in good stead throughout a long career which even now hasn’t come to an end: he appeared in lieder at the Wigmore Hall, apparently in good fettle, earlier this year as part of William Lyne’s farewell season.

In many respects, he gives continuity to the lineage of German tenors which can be traced on records from Karl Erb through Julius Patzak and Anton Dermota to Ernst Haefliger, none of whom had world-beating voices but all of whom triumphed through artistry and powers of communication. Indeed listening to Erb’s old discs I often imagine I am hearing Schreier, and vice versa. Like Erb and indeed Patzak, Schreier has been not just a memorable Mozartian but also an unforgettable Evangelist. All have had that ability to tell the story with absolute conviction and with the high, silvery tone which is so vital in Bach – and Bach was most important in the early days of Schreier’s career, as can be judged by his recordings of the Passions and many of the cantatas.

His thorough grasp of Bach’s idiom as both singer and conductor obviously derives from his upbringing. Son of a kantor, he joined the Dresden Kreuzchor in 1945, and studied there and in Leipzig. At the same time he learnt his opera at the Dresden Staatsoper, and in 1961 made his stage début as First Prisoner in Fidelio (he would go on to sing a tormented Florestan with Harnoncourt). Remaining in what was then East Germany, he joined the Berlin State Opera, where he quickly built an extensive repertory. Besides Mozart, his repertory included Almaviva, Fenton (Verdi and Nicolai), Des Grieux, the Simpleton in Boris Godunov, Leukippos in Daphne, the Dancing Master in Ariadne auf Naxos, David, Mime and Lensky.

A souvenir of that period, once available on Berlin Classics, has Schreier floating an effortless legato in Almaviva’s opening aria (in German) and an airy, youthful account of Fenton’s lovely solo from Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor. Listening to Schreier in these performances and comparing them with later ones makes clear the remarkable consistency of his singing.

Six years after his Salzburg début, Schreier showed a further side to his versatility when Karajan cast him as Loge in his Salzburg Easter Festival Rheingold, which he subsequently recorded, along with Mime, on the Janowski Ring. In both cases he eschewed caricature and relied on the virtues of musicality to project character. Both readings are models of their kind in the way Schreier always keeps a sense of proportion while retaining individuality.

He has also made at least three memorable contributions to recordings of operas by Richard Strauss. His Flamand in Karl Böhm’s famous studio recording of Capriccio is the epitome of romantic ardour. To the doomed Leukippos, in Haitink’s set of Daphne, he brings an appropriate aura of pathos. His Dancing Master, in Kempe’s classic Ariadne auf Naxos, discloses yet another, lighter aspect of Schreier’s gift for characterisation. One of his later stage roles was Palestrina in Pfitzner’s opera. That part suited to perfection Schreier’s ability to convey intensity of expression on a pure line. Once more the line of interpreters of the part from Erb through Patzak was maintained by an artist of their class.



Leader in Lieder
Besides his extensive career in opera and on the concert platform, many may count his interpretation of Lieder gives him his overriding place among the aristocracy of tenors. From his early career, when he made a number of recordings of the genre, in East Germany, many of them now available on Berlin Classics, through to his invaluable series of Decca recitals with Andreas Schiff and his notable disc in Graham Johnson’s Schubert Edition on Hyperion, he has made as significant a contribution in this area as anyone bar Fischer-Dieskau.

In many ways his performances, though in a different and often more appropriate voice range, accord with those of his older coeval in the sense that they are positive, interventionist interpretations in which the music in hand is lived on a personal level: a performance of Die schöne Müllerin at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in the 1980s that left me emotionally drained by its immediacy. His recording with Schiff preserves that quality, but the plainer, fresher performance recorded much earlier with Walter Olbertz has its own virtues – as does the very personal one with guitarist Konrad Ragössnig (in parenthesis there was once available another, fascinating recital, on Novalis, of songs with guitar by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Spohr and Brahms, among others). All three versions of the Schubert are available or comparison.

In the case of Winterreise, Schreier’s arresting account with Richter, recorded live, held sway – I once chose it as supreme for BBC Radio 3’s Building a Library – but the recording with Schiff offers a more considered and unified view of the work. Both remain compelling experiences – as of course does Schreier’s and Schiff’s Schwanengesang, where for once a tenor makes the darker Heine settings even more tragic than do baritones. The rest of the series with Schiff, including discs devoted to the lieder of Mozart and Beethoven, are equally recommendable.

Schreier on Disc
For Teldec Schreier has made extensive recordings of Schumann’s lieder with Christoph Eschenbach, including Dichterliebe and the Op 24 Heine Liederkreis. Earlier recordings with Norman Shetler as excellent companion, are available on two CDs. All disclose Schreier as an almost ideal interpreter of Schumann, where a seamless legato, a poetic lyricism and an immediacy of communication bring out all that composer’s flights of fancy. Dichterliebe is a most persuasive example; unfortunately my favourite version, a 1984 live recording with Wolfgang Sawallisch from Munich on Philips, is unavailable at the moment. In it Schreier and his partner catch to perfection every aspect of this much-recorded cycle.

Schreier has always been an eloquent advocate of Hugo Wolf. Contributors to Song on Record I (CUP: 1986) without exception praised his efforts in this field. At the moment you can hear his finely shaped, penetrating, Gramophone Editor’s Choice CD of excerpts from the Mörike Lieder with Karl Engel on Orfeo, made as recently as 1998, and his 1994 Italienisches Liederbuch, with Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson, a Building a Library choice by Hilary Finch. The famed concentration and intensity of Schreier’s Lieder singing is evident throughout these discs as it is on his earlier CD of Goethe Lieder.

A source of spiritual renewal
His choral recordings most of the most notable works, under great conductors, include an eloquent Missa Solemnis under Kubelík on Orfeo. The same company has also issued Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, with Schreier in the important tenor part.

Schreier’s timbre has never been to everyone’s taste, some finding in his tone what the Germans term ‘grell’: perhaps the closest translation is ‘glaring’. To my ears that quality is one that adds to the individuality of Schreier’s vocal makeup. In any case, while it may be there in his forte singing, it is singularly absent from his beautiful mezza voce, which he controls literally from the head as well as from the heart.

In spite of all his activity as a singer, Schreier has found time to conduct and record, with sympathy, much of the choral music of Bach, Haydn and Mozart. Still, it is as a tenor of supreme intelligence and searching powers of interpretation that he will be remembered in years to come, above all in the works of Bach and Mozart and of the greatest composers of lieder. I have found that many of his recordings are not only benchmarks in their field but also provide a source of constant pleasure and spiritual renewal.









Key recordings

Bach St Matthew Passion
Richter
DG Archiv 427 704-2AX 3

Mozart Opera Arias
Suitner
Berlin Classics 0183692BC

Mozart Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Böhm
DG 429 868-2GX2

Mozart Die Zauberflöte
Davis
Philips 422 543-2PME3 (4/92)

Mozart Lucio Silla
Hager
Philips 422 532-2PME3 (2/92)

Beethoven Missa Solemnis
Masur
Berlin Classics 009160BC

Beethoven Lieder
Schiff
Decca 444 817-2DH (8/96)

Schubert Winterreise
Schiff
Decca 436 122 2DH (5/94)

Schubert Schwanengesang
Schiff
Decca 425 612-2DH (6/90)

Schumann Lieder
Shetler
Berlin Classics BC2110-2

Schumann Lieder
Eschenbach
Teldec 4509 97960-2

Wolf Mörike Lieder
Engel
Orfeo C142 981A (12/98)

Wolf Italienisches Liederbuch
Lott, Johnson
Hyperion CDA66760 (9/94)



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