This album just might give you all of the Schrecker songs you’ll ever need. I am not being overly critical when I say that a few go a long way—his earlier works in this genre are windswept with late-romantic illusions, while his later songs float atonality as a paper boat on a lake—cautious, curious, and a little uncertain. Schrecker (1878-1934) was a student of Arnold Rose and Robert Fuchs, and gave the early premieres of works like Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Zemlinsky’s Psalm 23. Eventually he held important teaching positions (Stefan Wolpe, Berthold Goldschmidt, Jascha Horenstein, Ernst Krenek, Artur Rodziński were some of his students) and became the most played composer in Germany after Richard Strauss. The National Socialist movement put an end to all of that, and after a few of his later operas flopped, they were forgotten, as has been most of his music – unfairly in my opinion, as these songs demonstrate.
But you cannot get around the fact that the later ones fail to communicate as did the earlier ones, and that his forays into the Schoenbergian world of experimentation may indeed have been his undoing. Nonetheless, there are enough fine examples on this disc to make it recommendable. Hermine Haselbock is the real star here, and seems to have found the secret to Schrekerian success. Wolfgang Holzmair is not as impressive as you might guess, approaching many of these songs rather tentatively, and with a half-strength voice that leaves the impression that he is not persuaded just how these pieces should go. But some of his conversational moments are effective, and overall this is a creditable effort. Sound is excellent, pianist support very good, and Bridge has supplied a nice gap-filler.
— Steven Ritter
