Graceful phrasing and vernal freshness characterise this promising recital

Lovers of song in the know are watching, and listening to, Elizabeth Watts. This lovely album should let others in on the secret (OK, she has won a couple of major prizes so it’s already not that much of a secret). The voice is silvery and fresh. And with such a young voice these Lieder are imbued with a sense of first love, first loss. Roger Vignoles as ever is among the most perceptive of accompanists.

-- Gramophone [2/2009]



SCHUBERT Lieder • Elizabeth Watts (sop); Roger Vignoles (pn) • RCA 732932 (71:23 Text and Translation)


An den Mond. Suleika I. Im Abendrot. Sei mir gegrüsst. Die Forelle. Heimliches Lieben. Der Sänger am Felsen. Thekla: ein Geisterstimme. An die Sonne. Aus Diego Manzanares. Nacht und Träume. Frühlingsglaube. Die Blumensprache. Nähe des Geliebten. An die Nachtigall. Liane. Des Mädchens Klage. Nachtviolen. Marie. Lambertine. Die Männer sind méchant


Here is a new release—though not her debut album—from English soprano Elizabeth Watts, who is a member of the BBC Radio 3’s “New Generation Artists” program. And what an absolutely ravishing recording it is.


Watts displayed an early interest in and talent for singing as a chorister at Norwich Cathedral, but initially pursued a more pragmatic course of study in archaeology at Sheffield University. In 2002, however, she won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music Britten International Opera School, where she studied with Lillian Watson and won several prizes, chief among which were the Kathleen Ferrier Prize in 2006 and the MIDEM Outstanding Young Artist Award in 2007. She has since been active on the British opera stage in roles that have included Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro and Papagena in The Magic Flute.


Watts’s voice, at this stage of her career, strikes me as being an ideal instrument for Schubert’s songs, calling to mind the intensely focused clarity and laser-like delivery of Elly Ameling in her four-disc Schubert collection with pianists Dalton Baldwin and Rudolf Jensen on Philips. Watts’s voice, though, has a bit more heft to it, not having quite the soubrette-like quality that makes Ameling’s voice so perfectly suited to the German Lied and French mélodie repertoire, but less so to the heavier operatic dramatic soprano roles. Watts, I think, as her voice develops and becomes weightier still, will be able to widen her own repertoire to include some of the heavier Italian opera roles of Verdi and perhaps even Puccini. It’s exciting to hear another great operatic stage soprano in the making.


Her Schubert recital is a well-chosen mix of the familiar— An den Mond, Im Abendrot , and Die Forelle —and less frequently heard songs such as Aus “Diego Manzanares, Lambertine , and Die Männer sind méchant . You can hear these songs, of course, in Graham Johnson’s comprehensive Schubert collection, assuming you have acquired every one of them. Aus Diego Manzanares , to a poem by Franz Xaver von Schlechta, appears in Volume 17 sung by Lucia Popp; Lambertine , to a poem by Josef Ludwig Stoll, is sung by Arleen Auger in Volume 9; and Die Männer sind méchant , to a poem by Johann Gabriel Seidl, appears in Volume 13, sung by Marie McLaughlin. In each case, however, comparing them side by side with Watts, I preferred Watts, both for the crystalline purity of her voice and for her highly musical phrasing and sensitive shading of the words.


Roger Vignoles has perhaps not lived and breathed Schubert quite to the extent that Graham Johnson has, nor made his mark almost exclusively as a partner in song; but Vignoles’s wider-ranging reach into chamber music and 20th-century repertoire informs his Schubert with a hindsight that can at times impart a feeling to these songs that transcends their time and place.


As densely packed with Schubert Lieder recitals as the current catalog is, it calls to mind Carl Sagan’s “billions and billions of stars.” So any new addition would have to shine brightly indeed to warrant special notice; and this, one, in my opinion, does. Very strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins