ミュージカル俳優や黒人霊歌歌手としても活躍したアフリカ系アメリカ人のメゾ・ソプラノ歌手、アイネズ・マシューズ(1917-2004)が歌ったシューベルトの三大歌曲集から「冬の旅」と「美しき水車小屋の娘」のセットが初CD化。(他に「白鳥の歌」の録音もあり)
現代では女性歌手による同曲の録音・演奏も珍しくありませんが、アイネズ・マシューズはソプラノのロッテ・レーマンに次ぐ2人目の録音となりました。(メゾ・ソプラノとして、また恐らくアフリカ系歌手としても初録音)
東京エムプラス
発売・販売元 提供資料(2023/09/05)
This release in the Parnassus labels Black Swans series features mezzo-soprano Inez Matthews. The erasure of African Americans from the music-historical record is rarely as vividly shown as in the case of this singer, known primarily as the voice-over singer of Ruth Attaways Serena Robbins in the 1959 film of Gershwins Porgy and Bess. Little biographical information about her is known. She was not a musical theater singer making the leap to Gershwins opera but a classically trained artist who appeared in opera and made several recordings, including these 1954 traversals of Schuberts song cycles Die schone Mullerin, D. 795, and Winterreise, D. 911. (She also recorded Schwanengesang, D. 957.) Theyre rather remarkable, and not only because of the singers origins, which were remarkable enough in 1954. Prior to Matthews, Lotte Lehmann was apparently the only other female singer to record these male-perspective cycles, and it would be interesting indeed if someone were to uncover her thinking about undertaking these when so much female-centered repertory was available. More remarkable still is that the interpretations work and do not draw attention to themselves unduly; Matthews has a somewhat abstract sound that lifts her readings beyond the sphere of gender. It is deeply melancholy with a shining quality. She is a bit less successful in Die schone Mullerin, whose squarish rhythms confine her voice a bit, but that cycle is nevertheless worth hearing. In Die Winterreise, where she has room to let the buried expression surface, as it were, she is very strong indeed. Sample the psychologically and harmonically complex Auf dem Flusse, a song that has defeated many a more famous singer. Parnassus has remastered the recordings, and the 1954 sound is displayed to its best advantage. A remarkable historical document. ~ James Manheim
Rovi