Samuel Hasselhorn: Schubert Hoffnung review – timbral and emotional flexibility is in ample supply

The German baritone’s all-Schubert disc with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz is full of communicative diction and poetic phrasing

Now in his mid-30s, German baritone Samuel Hasselhorn is a major player in a veritable rat-pack of high-flying young lieder singers. His growing discography includes an ongoing series with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, part of Harmonia Mundi’s Schubert 200 project to record all the composer’s songs, from 1823 onwards, ahead of the 2028 bicentenary of his death.

The year 1826 found Schubert in affirmative mood, a torrent of lieder reflecting a newfound sense of optimism. The album, appropriately entitled Hoffnung, the German word for hope, opens with a nuanced account of the expansive Im Freien. The combination of Hasselhorn’s communicative diction and Bushakevitz’s poetic phrasing brings a rapt intimacy to this six-minute celebration of nocturnal beauty.

A similar timbral and emotional flexibility is in ample supply across a wide range of songs, including lyrical gems such as Alinde, Im Frühling and Der Wanderer an den Mond. While his voice is built on dark, chocolatey foundations, in the upper register Hasselhorn is light and airy without recourse to crooning. Dramatic outbursts reveal an iron fist in a velvet glove – try the wintery bluster of Über Wildemann. Fischerweise, by way of contrast, bubbles with openhearted vitality. He even manages to breathe new life into old Shakespearean chestnuts such as Who is Silvia? and Hark! Hark! The Lark!

Stream it on Apple Music (above) or on Spotify