On January 31, my friends and I marked Schubert’s birthday listening to a remarkable quartet, the Erlkings, at Wigmore Hall in London.
This crossover band from Austria is fronted by an American baritone/guitarist who sings everything in English translation. They specialize in Schubert (their name comes, of course, from “Der Erlkönig,” one of his small masterpieces), but they have branched out into Schumann and Beethoven as well, taking early 19th-century art songs and turning them into contemporary popular song.
Well, that makes them sound just a bit horrible to a lover of Schubert like myself, but—trust me!—they’re splendid, thoughtful interpreters of the songs. Or don’t trust me, and see for yourself on the streaming platform of your choice.
The reason I’m writing about them now, though, is the way their performance of that namesake song has been sticking in my head. “Der Erlkönig,” if you don’t know it, is a poem by Goethe, best known today through its terrifying musical setting by Schubert. A father rides through the night with his feverish child, who sees and hears the seductive, menacing Erlking—an otherworldly figure who coaxes, cajoles, and finally threatens him. The accompaniment’s relentless gallop—cello, tuba, and percussion here taking the place of Schubert’s fortepiano—mimics the horse’s hooves while the singer rapidly alternates between narrator, father, son, and Erlking. The father finally reaches his home, but the song ends brutally: “In his arms the child was dead.”
But when Brian Benner reached the end of the song in the performance I attended, instead of “the boy was dead,” he sang, “the boy went to bed.”
