1.Der Freund

Although he is regarded by many as the finest song composer ever, Hugo Wolf had his failures, or at least those moments in which he failed to reach his customary high standards. Der Freund is one of them. Although Wolf writer and song analyst Eric Sams holds out some affection for the song, the two music writers most closely associated with Wolf's work (and both Wolf biographers), Ernest Newman and Frank Walker, dismiss the song out of hand. Some of the difficulty might be attributable to the poem. As the first of a number of poems by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857) set by Wolf, "Der Freund" (The Friend) lacked the sophistication and assurance of Eduard Mörike's texts—those Wolf had been setting most recently. Still, the song is not without interest and in the hands of a bold, but subtle singer and a sensitive pianist, it can leave a positive impression. The metaphor here equates man's life to existence at sea. He who slumbers at sea like a child in a cradle experiences only his dreams and knows nothing of life's realities. He who is summoned by storms to wild celebration and has been abandoned by the false world, however, learns to move boldly and steer his vessel with serious intent. He is true, he has faith in God and the stars; he shall be my "Schiffmann," my steersman, states the narrator. Eichendorff's devotion to nature sometimes got the better of him and this poem teeters on that brink. Nonetheless, the song contains many felicities and offers the singer with noble voice and musical integrity the opportunity for a heart-stirring performance. The gently rocking figures that begin the two-minute song give way to dark, meandering, storm-tossed figures. Piano octaves summon a sense of gravity and courage as the song builds in intensity to a martial tone. The piano figures are still more sharply defined as the singer moves from climax to climax to a sort of musical oratory before the song simply and resolutely concludes. If, to counteract the taint of bombast, both singer and accompanist resist becoming overwrought and steer their own steady course, the song can prove an enlivening and pleasing one.

© Erik Eriksson, All Music Guide

2.Der Musikant

While hardly a poor song, Wolf's Der Musikant (The Roving Minstral) from September 22, 1888, is hardly one of Wolf's masterpieces. Setting a silly little four-verse poem by Eichendorff as a silly little strophic song with a bright, major-keyed melody that's more insipid than inspired and a bouncy accompaniment that's more amiable than awesome, Der Musikant is a song that fills out Wolf's Eichendorff world rather than a song that creates a world of its own.

© All Music Guide

3.Verschwiegene Liebe

Most critics view Wolf's settings of Eichendorff of 1888 as lesser works than his Mörike settings of the same year, finding them more prosaic and less poetic, more insipid and less inspired. And while they may well be correct in their judgment of the whole volume, they are certainly incorrect in their judgments of individual songs. In Verschwiegene Liebei (Discreet Love) of August 31, 1888, Wolf surely created one of his most beautiful songs of night and love, a song that captures something of Schumann's Der Mondabend but is altogether more intimate and more tender. The ardent delicacy and quiet passion of the high-lying melody, the soft ringing of the accompaniment in the upper register of the piano, the mood of inward rapture that Wolf's sensitivity to Eichendorff's poem captures so perfectly: these are all the elements of a great Wolf song.

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