Barbra Streisand: Classical Barbra : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In 1973 Columbia issued a soundtrack of a television special called Barbra Streisand ... and Other Musical Instruments. On it was a version of Schubert's song, "Auf dem Wasser zu singen," that quickly became a camp party record for all lieder enthusiasts. The arrangement was treacle incarnate. Streisand's singing was soupy shtick incarnate. And in the middle she broke things off and began to speak: "Unh. They just don't write toons like that anymore. 'Auf dem Wasser zu singen.' It is really one of my favorites, and I'm sure it's one of yours. In fact, it's so much fun to sing, why don't you join in with me for the last chorus and, uh, you know, sing along with Schubert." In the midst of the "last chorus" she broke in with a Catskillian "wunnerful, wunnerful" to her presumably singing-along audience. And at the end she added a spoken "terrific." It was to die, and even as labored parody, she did.

Needless to say, with that track record, the camp fans were waiting with sharpened fangs for this one, a whole delicious LP devoted to such grotesquerie. Presumably Streisand herself was a little nervous about the reception; this disc was recorded a couple of years ago but only released now.

Well, lovers of camp will be disappointed because this is a decent enough little record. The singing hardly covers all sides of Streisand's own style—she sounds timorously constrained most of the time and holds back entirely from her trademark belting climaxes. It hardly matches the best of her competition among real classical singers. But on its own terms—the overt and decently tasteful reduction of carefully selected classical snippets to the level of pleasantly crooning background music—this is an acceptable album.

The arrangements are by Claus Ogerman, and they are effectively understated, with two lieder, by Schumann and Wolf, actually sung with the composers' original piano accompaniments. The only overt miscalculations are the penultimate number, attributed (probably incorrectly) to Handel, which rather overmatches her, and Ogerman's own song at the end, which is classical only by courtesy.

Otherwise, we have a series of quiet, melodic songs by Debussy, Canteloube, Wolf, Fauré, Orff, Handel and Schumann. To all of them Streisand brings a closely miked, modest approach, reasonably secure from a technical standpoint and surprisingly idiomatic from a stylistic standpoint. This is hardly an instance of surpassing classical singers. Lieder singing, unlike operatic singing, is an art in which the best results are often obtained by those who eschew stentorian fervor in favor of conversational intimacy. Streisand has the intimacy but lacks the perception, the control and the experience to make serious statements about this music. But it's not as bad as it could have been, it may point some people toward the real thing, and in the meantime it makes for better middle-of-the-road easy listening than most MOR.