Page 198 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK

vocal melody, like the gorgeous solo viola line in No.4, "Frage nicht" (ask not), or the clarinet and
then flute in No. 10, "Kommen und Scheiden" (coming and departing). There is also a frequent
and subtle role in the orchestral texture, cleverly underscoring, punctuating and commenting, for
a piano.

Elegie is what it says on the tin: just about all the “Wehmut” (sadness), moonlight, churchyards,
autumn winds and lost happiness we could ever want, and just under an hour of it. Whereas the
Notturno often keeps a sense of wonder in nature (particularly in the Olaf Bär recording), in the
Elegie, the gaze tends to be inward, with the external environment as a reinforcer of mood. So
there is a lot of autumn, many of the markings at the top of several of the songs are simply ‘ruhig’
(quiet). Love might be sincerely felt, as in "Zweifelnder Wunsch", No.6 (surely ‘doubting wish’,
rather than ‘despairing’ as appears in the booklet translation) but it brings uncertainty rather than
any sense of resolve or fulfilment. There are two symmetrically placed loud storms, the seventh
song from the beginning and the seventh song from the end, in which Gerhaher inevitably gets a
bit more shouty, and clips his consonants à la Fischer-Dieskau, but that serves as a reminder of
how superb he is when he has a lyrical line to express and to explain, as is mostly the case. A
perfect example is No.12, "Herbstklage" (autumn lament). The text is yet another of Lenau's
mournful and self-pitying poems of regret. All hopes of spring have now given way to
disappointment (aw...), but the song with its melodic idée fixe, Gerhaher’s interpretation of it and
Holliger’s pacing and the Baslers’ gently luminous accompaniment are simply gorgeous.

Sebastian Scotney