Katinka von Richter has made a short film as much as a performance, and a lovely one. The camera drifts through slow dissolves, golden out-of-focus light and reflections in the raised lid and an ornate white mirror, finding her hands at the keyboard in turn. The salon-like room suits Liszt’s own world.
The music deserves that care. This is the nineteenth song of Die schöne Müllerin, a dialogue in which the heartbroken miller speaks in G minor and the brook answers him consolingly in the major. Liszt kept both voices singing on the keyboard, and an anonymous Stuttgart admirer, quoted in James Huneker’s 1911 book on Liszt, called his Schubert transcriptions “those genuine pearls”. Von Richter clearly loves these charming melodies. Her opening is grave and unhurried, the miller’s line sung over a dark, warm bass, and when the harmony turns towards the brook’s major key the colour lifts like light on water. The swelling passage that follows (around 3:20) reaches its peak without hardness, and the close in G major fades away beautifully, the brook having the last, gentle word.
Two small reservations. The middle stretch slows so broadly that the dialogue loses a little of its forward pull; the brook’s reply might murmur more persuasively if it kept moving. The recorded sound also carries a faint hiss, though the warmth of the piano more than compensates.
These are minor points beside the overall effect: a tender, thoughtfully staged reading that treats Schubert’s song as a story rather than a showpiece, and invites you to watch as well as listen.