Few composers have been so thoroughly buried by the accident of friendship. Ludwig Thuille knew Richard Strauss — they were close from their student days in Munich — and that proximity, which should have been an advantage, turned out to be something closer to an eclipse. Strauss’s shadow fell long and early. It still does.
Which is a shame, because Thuille was not a Strauss manqué. He was something more interesting: a thoroughly accomplished composer working comfortably within a late-Romantic idiom that owed its deepest allegiances to Schumann and Brahms, occasionally reaching toward the harmonic adventurousness of Wolf without quite arriving there — and content, mostly, not to arrive. His songs in particular have a warmth and a craft that reward attention on their own terms.
Roman Trekel brings a baritone of genuine quality to this music. The voice is clear-grained and forward-sitting, with a sanguine brightness in the upper register that suits Thuille’s melodic writing beautifully. “In goldener Fülle” shows what he can do when the line opens up — the tone rings out, free of strain, with a lively resilience that never tips into hectoring. Trekel has been disc for years now with consistent distinction, and Hartmut Höll is exactly the accompanist this repertoire needs: attentive, musically intelligent, never merely dutiful.
The range of poets Thuille chose to set is itself worth noting. Eichendorff and Gottfried Keller are expected company in any serious Lieder program, but Thuille also turned to Julius Bierbaum, Gustav Falke, Heinrich Leuthold, Carl Hauptmann, and Robert Hamerling — a roster that tells you something about his literary curiosity, or at least his willingness to move beyond the canon. The results are uneven, as they inevitably are. But the variety keeps the program alive.
“Waldesgang” surges with a dramatic urgency that feels genuinely earned, Höll’s piano building a kind of contained turbulence beneath Trekel’s line. “Botschaft” is almost the opposite — hushed, luminous, the voice floating over a texture that seems barely to breathe. “Waldeinsamkeit” achieves something rarer still: a magical stillness that doesn’t drift into vagueness. And “Die Nacht” — slow, circling, emotionally dense — has the quality of music that gets under your skin before you’ve quite decided whether you like it.
“In meine traumer Heimat” is the disc’s most saturated moment. The harmonic language thickens, the emotional pressure builds, and Trekel leans into it without losing control of the line. It’s the kind of song that makes you wonder why this composer isn’t programmed more.
Thuille belonged, Matthias Wiegandt’s notes remind us, to what was called the Munich school — a loose constellation that included Clemens von Franckenstein, Richard Wetz, and the Danish composer Paul von Klenau. It’s a grouping that means little to most listeners today, and perhaps it shouldn’t mean too much. Thuille’s music earns its hearing on its own account, not as a sociological artifact.
One complaint, and it’s a practical one: Capriccio prints the song texts in German but offers no English translations. For listeners coming to this repertoire fresh — which is precisely who should be coming to it — that’s an unnecessary obstacle. The Oehms alternative, with Rebecca Broberg and Frank Strobel, covers different opus numbers and is worth investigating if Thuille takes hold of you. But this disc, with its stronger singing and more varied program, is the better introduction.
Thuille deserves to be heard. Trekel and Höll make the case persuasively.
