SOMM Recordings is proud to mark the centenary of the legendary German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (28 May 1925–18 May 2012) by adding to his canonical discography with live recital and concert recordings from the Music Preserved archive. Fischer-Dieskau was at the very height of his powers from 1960–75, and the performances on this album date from that period. A bonus CD contains two interviews conducted by Jon Tolansky—appearing here in their entirety for the first time—the 75th Birthday Interview (2000) and 80th Birthday Interview(2005).
The extraordinarily vast repertoire of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau over his 45-year career comprised lieder, operas, cantatas, and oratorios. He sang these in German, Italian, French, Russian, English, Hebrew, Hungarian, and Latin, from eras that spanned the Baroque to the latter part of the 20th century. Particularly, it was the controlled power and beauty of his voice, and the dramatic intensity and poetry of his interpretations, that led him to excel in the genre of German lieder. In this form he exerted a virtually unprecedented stylistic and interpretative influence—not only on the musical world of his day, but also on generations of performers to come.
SOMM’s centenary tribute opens with four songs by Ferruccio Busoni, all being works that were written late in the composer’s career. They come from a programme that Fischer-Dieskau gave with Gerald Moore in 1962.
Leopold Stokowski’s unorthodox seating arrangements, his flexibility regarding free individual string bowings, his emphasis on vibrato and tone, and his idiosyncratic baton-less conducting technique, were some of the practical elements that defined his popularity and his uniquely lush sound—coupled with allowing himself free reign to alter details of the musical text in his performances. Yet there remains a highly elusive element in the art of a great conductor. The rehearsal presented on this release provides a glimpse into Stokowski’s creative process. One the one hand, he was fastidiously detailed and precisely demanding to the point of being draconian, but he also admired and encouraged an element of spontaneity, and even improvisation, within the framework of his extreme insistence on precision.
At the 1971 Helsinki Festival, Fischer-Dieskau presented a recital with Irwin Gage, which was devoted entirely to songs with texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The recital, described by a contemporary critic as “a landmark event,” featured compositions by contemporaries of Goethe, who lived from 1749 to 1832, such as the Countess Anna Amalia, Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Reichardt, and Goethe’s friend Carl Friedrich Zelter. The more familiar composers represented on this Goethe-inspired recital were active during the first part of the 20th century. They include Richard Strauss, Max Reger, and Ferruccio Busoni.
This tribute to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau also includes six songs from a programme of works by Gustav Mahler, which was presented with his long-time collaborator, Karl Engel. Three of the songs are from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, based on texts of German folk poems, and three are from the collection of five Rückert-Lieder, after poems written by Friedrich Rückert.
The musical component of this collection closes with a concert performance of three songs by Zoltán Kodály, sung in Hungarian by Fischer-Dieskau. The composer proves himself an outstanding interpreter of his own music in conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.
In the two interviews included on the bonus CD, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau discusses his early years, his teachers, the development of his career, and a small but revealing cross-section of his enormous repertoire.
On This Recording
Disc 1
Ferruccio Busonia
- Lied des Unmuts, BV 281 (2:55)
- Zigeunerlied, BV 281 (2:12)
- Schlechter Trost, BV 298a (225)
- Lied des Mephistopheles, BV 278a (1:37)
Anna Amaliab
- Auf dem Land (2:02)
Johann Friedrich Reichardt
- Beherzigung (Aus Lila) (1:01)
Carl Friedrich Zelter
- Gleich ung gleich (2:01)
Richard Strauss
- Gefunden, TrV 220/1 (2:00)
Max Reger
- Einsamkeit, Op. 75/18 (3:44)
Ferruccio Busoni
- Zigeunerlied, BV 295a (1:58)
Gustav Mahlerc
Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit
- No. 11, Ablösung im Sommer (1:34)
- No. 6, Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen
- No. 14, Selbstgefühl (2:06)
5 Rückert-Lieder
- No. 1, Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft! (3:14)
- No. 3, Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder (1:25)
- No. 5, Um Mitternacht (6:51)
Zoltán Kodályd
2 Songs, Op. 5
- No. 1, A közelítő tél (The Approaching Winter) (10:59)
- No. 2, Sírni, sírni, sírni (Cry, Cry, Cry) (6:32)
- Kádár Kata, K.127 (15:14)
Disc 2
75th Birthday Interview (2000)
- Earliest Musical Memories (0:41)
- Singing Winterreise as a teenager – Comments on Winterreise (3:35)
- Opera debut as Posa in Verdi’s Don Carlos (1:21)
- Singing Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with Wilhelm Furtwängler – Memories of Furtwängler (3:41)
- Comments on singing lieder and opera (1:27)
- Singing the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (3:12)
- Singing the title role in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (2:00)
- Stage direction in opera (2:02)
- Singing Hans Sachs in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg(1:10)
- Singing title role in Verdi’s Macbeth (2:28)
- Singing Iago in Verdi’s Otello (3:12)
- Singing Mandryka in Strauss’s Arabella (1:14)
- Championing new contemporary music (0:43)
- Singing the title role in Berg’s Wozzeck (1:55)
- Singing the title role in Reimann’s Lear (1:46)
- Singing the title role in Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise (0:56)
- Conducting career – Recollections of renowned conductors (7:56)
- Singing with Britten (1:17)
- Teaching singing to pupils (1:17)
- Piano Accompanists (0:58)
- Painting (0:41)
80th Birthday Interview (2005)
- Early days becoming a singer (3:07)
- Singing Winterreise as a teenager – Comments on Winterreise (1:26)
- Grieg songs (1:03)
- Wolf lieder (1:43)
- Young people coming to study with him (1:38)
- Busoni’s Doktor Faust (3:53)
- Wotan and Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (3:11)
- Singing the role of Wotan with Herbert von Karajan (2:33)
- Singing the title role in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle (3:02)
- Singing Golaud in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (1:10)
- Singing Hans Sachs in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg(3:18)
- “Revelge” in Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1:19)
- Painting (1:31)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone
a Gerald Moore; bIrwin Gage; cKarl Engel, piano
dLondon Symphony Orchestra; Zoltán Kodály, conductor
