Christopher Glynn / Sir John Tomlinson SCHUBERT Swansong

Schubert's Schwanengesang is here performed in a new English translation by Jeremy Sams: songs of love and songs of horror all the more eviscerating 'in the vernacular'. English versions of two other major songs—mini cantatas almost—from Schubert's final year complete the programme, Sophie Bevan performing Der Hirt auf dem Felsen and Auf dem Strom with obbligato contributions from Alec Frank-Gemmill and Julian Bliss.

Schubert’s Schwanengesang, though not itself a cycle, is a logical extension of Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Here again are the brooks and the birds, the jilted suitors leaving town, the lovers looking at or into the beloved’s house. Loss and longing are everywhere. But if Die schöne Müllerin is about hope (finding someone to love) and Winterreise is about despair (leaving someone loved), Schwanengesang is about resignation. The beloved is not by your side and one can deal with that in different ways. By sending messages via rivers, trees or even pigeons. By flight, by self-imposed exile, by dreaming of what might have been and by accepting what never will. The distant or absent beloved is present in almost every song, and though there is no journey involved as in the previous cycles, there is a unity in this collection which shows one where Schubert’s thoughts were. He knew he was going to die and die alone.

I’m glad, though, that I translated them in the order in which they were written. For here, suddenly, one comes across a major challenge. A Great Poet, Heinrich Heine, before whom the mere versifier should genuflect. But of course, Schubert does nothing of the sort. He draws from Heine what he needs, just as he does from Rellstab in this collection and Müller in the others. And what he gets from Heine one can hear in the music. Monolithic, massive, Beethoven and beyond. A glimpse of what might have been but could never have been. (Jeremy Sams)