Wonne der Wehmut

“Drei Gesänge für Singstimme und Klavier” (Three Songs for Voice and Piano), op. 83, was composed in the summer of 1810 and dedicated to Princess Karoline Kinsky. Her husband Prince Ferdinand Kinsky, with whom she shared the Kinsky Palace, was one member of the triumvirate who funded Beethoven’s pension from 1809 until his death, along with Prince Lobkowitz and the Archduke Rudolph.

This 1933 recording is of the first of the three songs, entitled “Wonne der Wehmut” (The Bliss of Melancholy), as performed by the German-American singer Elisabeth Schumann (1888–1952). The pianist is thought to be George Reeves. Schumann was a member of the Vienna State Opera between 1919 and 1937, and emigrated to the United States in 1938. Although she was renowned during her lifetime as an outstanding interpreter of Mozart and Strauss, her back catalogue of recordings is dominated by lieder. This setting of Goethe’s single-stanza poem, written in the “joyous” key of E major, dispenses with an introduction, but the opening phrase still succeeds in setting the tone and content of the rest of song. The poem is addressed to “tears of unhappy love” and begins by exhorting them not to dry. The word “nicht” (“not”) is expressively emphasised in the singer’s voice, and Schumann’s recording imbues it with lyrical intimacy. In Beethoven’s interpretation of the poem, the supposedly unhappy love reveals itself to be the source of the “bliss” of the title.
(Constanze Köhn)