Maria Stader is a favorite singer of mine. I was delighted to find this recording of her singing a number of Schubert Lieder at the Prades Festival in 1953. They are really wonderful. Accompanying her on the piano is William Kapell, a young American pianist who died tragically in an airplane crash in 1953. Eugene Istomin became artistic director of this festival, and he asked Pablo Casals to invite Kapell. Kapell spent more than two weeks in Prades, and there are a few pirate recordings of his concerts there. This is one of them.
I. “Im Frühling”, D. 882 0:00
II. “La Pastorella”, D. 528 4:57
III. “Du bist die Ruh”, D. 776 7:00
IV. “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt”, D. 877 11:46
V. “Gretchen am Spinnrade”, D. 118 15:16
VI. “Die Forelle”, D. 550 18:56
Schubert, “Im Frühling”
Still sitz ich an des Hügels Hang,
Der Himmel ist so klar,
Das Lüftchen spielt im grünen Tal,
Wo ich beim ersten Frühlingsstrahl
Einst, ach, so glücklich war.
Wo ich an ihrer Seite ging
So traulich und so nah,
Und tief im dunkeln Felsenquell
Den schönen Himmel blau und hell,
Und sie im Himmel sah.
Sieh, wie der bunte Frühling schon
Aus Knosp’ und Blüte blickt!
Nicht alle Blüten sind mir gleich,
Am liebsten pflückt’ ich von dem Zweig,
Von welchem sie gepflückt.
Denn alles ist wie damals noch,
Die Blumen, das Gefild;
Die Sonne scheint nicht minder hell,
Nicht minder freundlich schwimmt im Quell
Das blaue Himmelsbild.
Es wandeln nur sich Will und Wahn,
Es wechseln Lust und Streit,
Vorüber flieht der Liebe Glück,
Und nur die Liebe bleibt zurück,
Die Lieb’ und ach, das Leid!
O wär ich doch ein Vöglein nur
Dort an dem Wiesenhang!
Dann blieb’ ich auf den Zweigen hier,
Und säng ein süsses Lied von ihr,
Den ganzen Sommer lang.
Schubert “In Springtime”
I sit silently on the hillside.
The sky is so clear,
the breezes play in the green valley
where once, in the first rays of spring,
I was, oh, so happy.
Where I walked by her side,
so tender, so close,
and saw deep in the dark rocky stream
the fair sky, blue and bright,
and her reflected in that sky.
See how the colorful spring
already peeps from bud and blossom.
Not all the blossoms are the same to me:
I like most of all to pluck them from the branch
from which she has plucked.
For all is still as it was then,
the flowers, the fields;
the sun shines no less brightly,
and no less cheerfully,
the sky’s blue image bathes in the stream.
Only will and delusion change,
and joy alternates with strife;
the happiness of love flies past,
and only love remains;
love and, alas, sorrow.
Oh, if only I were a bird,
there on the sloping meadow!
Then I would stay on these branches here,
and sing a sweet song about her
all summer long.
Schubert “La pastorella al prato”
La pastorella al prato
Contenta se ne va
Coll’ agnellino a lato
Cantando in libertà.
Se l’innocente amore
Grandisce il suo pastore
La bella pastorella
Contenta ognor sarà.
Schubert “The Shepherdess in the Meadow”
The shepherdess in the meadow
goes along happily,
the lambs at her side,
and sings innocently.
If her innocent love
pleases her shepherd,
the fair shepherdess
will always ever be happy.
Schubert “Du bist die Ruh”
Du bist die Ruh,
Der Friede mild,
Die Sehnsucht du,
Und was sie stillt.
Ich weihe dir
Voll Lust und Schmerz
Zur Wohnung hier
Mein Aug’ und Herz.
Kehr’ ein bei mir,
Und schliesse du
Still hinter dir
Die Pforten zu.
Treib andern Schmerz
Aus dieser Brust.
Voll sei dies Herz
Von deiner Lust.
Dies Augenzelt
Von deinem Glanz
Allein erhellt,
O füll’ es ganz.
Schubert “You are rest”
You are rest
and gentle peace.
You are longing
and what sit quiets.
Full of joy and grief
I consecrate to you
my eyes and my heart
as a dwelling place.
Come in to me
and softly close
the gate
behind you.
Drive all other grief
from my breast.
Let my heart
be full of your joy.
My eyes
are lit
by your radiance:
O, fill it wholly!
Schubert “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt”
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
Weiss, was ich leide!
Allein und abgetrennt
Von aller Freude,
Seh’ ich an’s Firmament
Nach jener Seite.
Ach! der mich liebt und kennt
Ist in der Weite.
Es schwindelt mir, es brennt
Mein Eingeweide.
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
Weiss, was ich leide!
Schubert “Only he who knows yearning”
Only he who knows yearning
Know what I suffer!
Alone and cut off
From every joy,
I search the sky
In each direction.
Ah! he who loves and knows me
Is far away.
My head reels,
My body blazes.
Only he who knows yearning
Knows what I suffer!
Schubert “Gretchen am Spinnrade”
Meine Ruh’ ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer,
Ich finde sie nimmer
Und nimmermehr.
Wo ich ihn nicht hab’
Ist mir das Grab,
Die ganze Welt
Ist mir vergällt.
Mein armer Kopf
Ist mir verrückt
Mein armer Sinn
Ist mir zerstückt.
Meine Ruh’ ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer,
Ich finde sie nimmer
Und nimmermehr.
Nach ihm nur schau’ ich
Zum Fenster hinaus,
Nach ihm nur geh’ ich
Aus dem Haus.
Sein hoher Gang,
Sein’ edle Gestalt,
Seines Mundes Lächeln,
Seiner Augen Gewalt.
Und seiner Rede
Zauberfluss.
Sein Händedruck,
Und ach, sein Kuss!
Meine Ruh’ ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer,
Ich finde sie nimmer
Und nimmermehr.
Mein Busen drängt sich
Nach ihm hin.
Ach dürft’ ich fassen
Und halten ihn.
Und küssen ihn
So wie ich wollt’
An seinen Küssen
Vergehen sollt’!
Schubert “Gretchen at the spinning-wheel”
My peace is gone
My heart is heavy;
I shall never
Ever find peace again.
When he’s not with me,
Life’s like the grave;
The whole world
Is turned to gall.
My poor head
Is crazed,
My poor mind
Shattered.
My peace is gone
My heart is heavy;
I shall never
Ever find peace again.
It’s only for him
I gaze out from the window,
It’s only for him
I leave the house.
His proud stature
His noble form,
The smile on his lips,
The power of his eyes,
And the magic flow
Of his words,
The touch of his hand,
And ah, his kiss!
My peace is gone
My heart is heavy;
I shall never
Ever find peace again.
My bosom
Yearns for him.
Ah! if I could clasp
And hold him,
And kiss him
To my heart’s content,
And in his kisses
Perish!
Schubert “Die Forelle”
In einem Bächlein helle,
Da schoß in froher Eil’
Die launische Forelle
Vorüber wie ein Pfeil.
Ich stand an dem Gestade
Und sah in süßer Ruh
Des muntern Fischleins Bade
Im klaren Bächlein zu.
Ein Fischer mit der Rute
Wohl an dem Ufer stand,
Und sah’s mit kaltem Blute,
Wie sich das Fischlein wand.
So lang dem Wasser Helle,
So dacht ich, nicht gebricht,
So fängt er die Forelle
Mit seiner Angel nicht.
Doch endlich ward dem Diebe
Die Zeit zu lang. Er macht
Das Bächlein tückisch trübe,
Und eh ich es gedacht,
So zuckte seine Rute,
Das Fischlein zappelt dran,
Und ich mit regem Blute
Sah die Betrogene an.
Schubert “The trout”
In a bright brook
the fickle trout
in joyous haste
shot by like an arrow.
I stood on the bank
in blissful peace, watching
the lively fish swim
in the clear brook.
An fisher with his rod
stood on the bank
cold-bloodedly watching
the fish’s movements.
As long as the water
is clear, I thought,
he won’t catch the trout
with his rod.
But at length the thief
grew impatient. Cunningly
he made the stream treacherously murky,
and before he knew it,
his rod quivered,
and the fish floundered on it.
And I, my blood boiling,
looked on at the cheated one.
Maria Stader
November 5, 1911 – April 27, 1999
Maria Stader was a Hungarian-born, Swiss lyric soprano, known particularly for her Mozart interpretations.
Stader was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, on November 5, 1911, as Maria Molnár. During and after World War I, the price of food in Budapest was so high that it was difficult for her parents to support their five children. Maria and her younger sister, Elisabeth, were taken to Switzerland by The Salvation Army to recuperate for three months after being diagnosed with malnutrition. There, Maria’s foster parents requested she stay for a full nine months. However, once in Budapest again, Maria fell seriously ill and it was also determined she would need her tonsils operated on. Her foster parents arranged for her to return to Switzerland. Because of difficulties with the immigration office, Maria could not remain in the canton of Zürich, so her foster father found her a place with the Stader family in Romanshorn, where there is also the commemorative Maria-Stader path. They later adopted her.
In 1939, Stader married Hans Erismann, the music director of Weinfelden and later the choir director of the Zürich Opera House. Through the husband of her vocal teacher, Mathilde Bärlocher, she met Stefi Geyer and her husband. Geyer herself was born in Budapest and had moved to Zürich in 1920; she then became an ongoing supporter of Stader’s career. Another native of Budapest, Ilona Durigo, became her vocal teacher in 1935 in Zürich and introduced her to Hermann and Lily Reiff (a student of Franz Liszt). The Reiffs’ home was the frequent meeting place of Adolf Busch and his brother Hermann, Thomas Mann and the entire ensemble of the Zürich Opera and Zürich Theater. Fritz Busch arranged for Stader to go to the Schnabel School in Tremezzo, run by the wife of Artur Schnabel, a few years later. From 1938 on, Stader received training from Giannina Arangi-Lombardi in Milan.
Stader was a close friend of the Swiss politician Walther Bringolf, as well as of numerous musicians – especially pianist Clara Haskil and the Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay (with whom she became acquainted through Rolf Liebermann). She was also a friend of the French film director, Emil-Edwin Reinert and she corresponded with Albert Schweitzer.
Stader first achieved fame for her interpretations of Mozart and her collaborations with conductor Ferenc Fricsay on works such as Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, The Abduction from the Seraglio, two versions (1954 and 1960) of ‘Exsultate, jubilate’ and the Great Mass, as well as Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. She won, the Geneva International Music Competition in 1939, but although she “seemed poised for major stardom… her career was delayed by the outbreak of World War II,” according to Opera News. Later in her career, Stader acquired a reputation as an outstanding Bach interpreter, especially with Karl Richter and Ferenc Fricsay. She recorded the Requiem by Antonín Dvořák with Karel Ančerl, and Beethoven’s opera Fidelio (as Marzelline) with Hans Knappertsbusch.
Her concert tours had taken her around the world. Besides Europe and America, she sang in Japan, South Africa, and South America. Stader sang in various festivals, including the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, at the Prades Festival and at the Aspen Music Festival. She sang under the leadership of many well-known conductors including Eugen Jochum, Josef Krips, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, Carl Schuricht, Rafael Kubelík, Bruno Walter, Hermann Scherchen, Otto Klemperer, Ernest Ansermetand Dean Dixon. Until 1951, she taught at the Zürich Conservatory (merged in 1999 into the School of Music, Drama, and Dance (HMT), itself merged in 2007 into the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)) and later held master classes there.
She died in Zürich on April 27, 1999.
William Kapell
September 20, 1922 – October 29, 1953
By Virgil Thompson
New York Herald-Tribune
October, 1953
Among musicians of his generation William Kapell, just thirty-one on Sept. 20, 1953, was one of the great ones. His career was at the point where he was no longer considered a mere boy genius but was recognized by his colleagues as a mature artist. At nineteen he was winning big prizes. At twenty he began his career as a touring recitalist and a much-in-demand orchestral soloist. But for a decade his repertory had remained heavily weighted with the easy-to-put-over works of Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Khatchaturian. It was only in the last two years that he had gained real access to the grand repertory of the piano, to the concertos of Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms and Chopin and to the suites of Bach and Debussy, and that he had been genuinely successful with that repertory.
Kapell had fought hard for this access and for this success. He had fought with his management and with the press. And he had wrestled with the repertory itself, not only alone but also with the counsel and the detailed cooperation of musicians who knew that repertory. He had studied, labored, consulted, digested, grown. Kapell had become a grown man and a mature artist, a master. He could play great music with authority; his readings of it were at once musically sound and genuinely individual. He had a piano technique of the first class, a powerful mind, a consecration and a working ability such as are granted to few, and the highest aspirations toward artistic achievement.
Kapell was conquering the world. In one decade he had won a world-wide audience. At the beginning of a second he was recognized as a master to be taken seriously in the great piano repertory. He was already laying plans (and operating, too) toward the renewal of the repertory through the application of his great technical and interpretive powers to contemporary piano music and through devoted co-operation with comtemporary composers. And his conquests were not easy. Few artists have ever battled so manfully with management or so unheitatingly sassed the press. He was afraid of nobody because his heart was pure.
It is not germane that as a man he was a good son and brother, a good husband and father and a loyal friend, though he was all these. What is important to music is that he was a great musician and a great fighter. He did not fight for himself or for just any music. He fought to play well and to play the best music. Also to take part in the creative life of his time. And he was winning, would have gone on winning, for he had a star.
He also had an unlucky star, else he would not have been taken from us. And our loss, music’s loss, is irreparable. Other men of comparable genius and sincerity may arise; but none will ever take his place, because that place was unique. Kapell had built it to fit his own great talents. And built it, so that his talents could serve the whole world of music in their own particular and powerful way. Past services will remain and be of use to others. But Kapell himself, that huge life-force is dead; and his continuing musical presence will not be with us anymore.