Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone)
A Centenary Tribute
Gerald Moore, Irwin Gage, Karl Engel (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra/ Zoltán Kodály
rec. live, 1960-71
Texts and translations included
Reviewed as a download
SOMM Ariadne 5038-2 [145]
It’s of course understandable that record companies want to take the opportunity to commemorate the memory of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, arguably the greatest lieder singer of the last century. In 2022, DG marked the tenth anniversary of Fischer-Dieskau’s death by issuing a 107-CD set of his complete recordings on DG, Philips and Decca. This year, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, Warner Classics is releasing a set of his complete lieder recordings on HMV, EMI Electrola, Teldec and Erato, which runs to 79 CDs. For some listeners, these vast, definitive box sets are vital acquisitions from a library perspective. For others, once possessed, they can be a little intimidating. How do you choose what to play? Can you exert the mental energy to plan a recital? Will you, in fact, ever reach for that boxed set adorning your shelves?
Whichever type of listener or collector you are, this new two-disc set from SOMM, using live recordings held by the Music Preserved collection, will be a refreshing change. There’s an interesting composite recital that includes some rarities and the chance to hear the highly intelligent and articulate Fischer-Dieskau reflect on his career in two substantial interviews. There’s another bonus for me: I always feel Fischer-Dieskau live is a more interesting performer than in the recording studio.
This last point is illustrated by the first set of songs on the disc, Busoni’s Goethe-Lieder. They are not as well-known as they should be and it’s typical of Fischer-Dieskau’s vision for a broader lieder canon that he championed them as powerfully as he did. Busoni’s selection of poems has no discernible logic to it. Still, his settings possess an admirable clarity and consistency: all are rhythmically adventurous and have a slightly breathless, subversive streak, with plenty of scope for the singer to inject character and inhabit them. Fischer-Dieskau needs no second invitation. He is commanding, sardonic, all-knowing. I love the tongue-in-cheek way he delivers the Lied des Mephistopheles from Faust (the same Song of the Flea that Mussorgsky had set forty or so years before) as a nonsensical moral fable. His delivery of Zigeunerlied, a tale of werewolves encountered in the darkness of a forest at night, is terrifying, a twentieth-century Erlkönig. The performances here from a concert with Gerald Moore in May 1962 sound considerably more vivacious and exhilarating than the DG studio recording with Jorg Demus made a couple of years later (4863747). The recorded sound of the same songs from a recital at the Salzburg Festival in July of 1962 on an Orfeo set, also with Moore (C339050T), is much better than this new disc, and the performances are excellent. However, there is still an edginess to this Festival Hall presentation on SOMM that isn’t quite reproduced later in the summer in Austria.
The next group of songs was given at a concert from the Helsinki Festival in 1971, where Irwin Gage was the pianist. These are Goethe settings again, but this time they are by various composers, the first three of which being contemporaries of his: Princess Anna Amalia, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, and Carl Friedrich Zelter. None of them are particularly innovative for their time but when performed by Fischer-Dieskau, their virtues are manifest. Zelter in particular takes particular care to think about Goethe’s exquisite verse in Gleich und gleich about a bee sipping nectar from a flower and the result is genuinely charming. The final three settings are more arresting in different ways. Fischer Dieskau gives Gefunden by Richard Strauss an appropriate sense of serenity, and Reger’s Einsamkeit has a haunting, otherworldliness about it, which is quite extraordinary. We then get Zigeunerlied again, which is a more than adequate performance but not as spellbinding as the earlier version on the disc. The sound quality here is a little rough – the recording was taken from an off-air BBC rebroadcast of a Finnish Radio recording – but I agree with the assertion in the booklet that the value of these performances far outweighs the sonic deficiencies.
Two groups of Mahler songs follow. The first, three songs from the Lieder und Gesänge, have a freshness and immediacy which belies the number of times Fischer-Dieskau must have sung them by the summer of 1970 when the recital was given. This is particularly true of Ablösung im Sommer, doubly familiar to listeners because of Mahler’s use of it in his Symphony No 3. Fischer Dieskau’s singing here is both wonderfully light and resolutely hopeful in anticipation of the arrival of the nightingale. The second selection is from the Rückert-Lieder, culminating in a sublime rendition of Um Mitternacht. Karl Engel is the skilful accompanist. However many times one may have heard Fischer-Dieskau sing Mahler, I find in every live recording he finds something new to say. Um Mitternacht here feels more watchful and overtly expressive than in the performance on that Orfeo set of Salzburg recitals I mentioned and Engel’s playing, in this instance, has more flexibility than Moore’s.
The recital concludes with a real rarity: Fischer-Dieskau in orchestral songs by Zoltán Kodály in a 1960 performance with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. The songs were real discoveries for me: substantial pieces, beautifully orchestrated and deeply atmospheric. Kodály’s setting of Sírni, sírni, sírni by Endre Ady in particular is superb. The chilliness and desolation of the narrator watching a coffin approaching at a midnight funeral service is brilliantly evoked. Fischer-Dieskau is, of course, an intelligent enough singer to realise that understatement will work here, and the restraint he demonstrates against the haunting orchestral score is perfectly judged. This performance is something that I will wager will stay with any listener long after the music has finished. The other two songs, A közelítő tél and Kádár Kata provide a degree of contrast, and Fischer-Dieskau’s range of tonal colours and moods is terrific. Kodály would have been in his late seventies at the time of this recording but proves himself a highly accomplished conductor, and the LSO’s responsive playing is excellent.
The second disc consists of two interviews Fischer-Dieskau gave to Jon Tolansky, covering a range of genuinely interesting subjects. If you’ve read Echoes of a Lifetime, Fischer-Dieskau’s (sort of) autobiography, there won’t be much new here, but it’s an absolute pleasure to hear him in conversation and get a sense of that restless, always active mind. In a nice touch, the interviews have been thoughtfully tracked so that you can go straight to any topic of particular interest.
Overall, anybody with the slightest interest in Fischer-Dieskau’s legacy shouldn’t hesitate to acquire what I suspect will be one of the most thoughtful contributions to this centenary year. As I have said, the recorded sound is a bit variable (credit to Paul Baily, who is responsible for the remastering, for what he has achieved though). Still, after a few seconds of any of these performances, my ears had adjusted. The booklet notes by Jon Tolansky and Richard Jarman are excellent, and full texts and translations are included.
Dominic Hartley
Contents
Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924)
Lied des Unmuts BV 281
Zigeunerlied BV 295a
Schlechter Trost BV 298a
Lied des Mephistopheles BV 278a
(Royal Festival Hall, London, 14 May 1962, Gerald Moore, piano)
Anna Amalia (1723-1787)
Auf dem Land
Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814)
Beherzigung (Aus Lila)
Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832)
Gleich und gleich
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Gefunden TrV 220/1
Max Reger (1873-1916)
Einsamkeit Op.75/18
Ferruccio Busoni
Zigeunerlied BV 295a
(Kulttuuritalo, Helsinki Festival, 6 September 1971, Irwin Gage, piano)
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
from Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit
Ablösung im Sommer
Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen
Selbstgefühl
from 5 Rückert-Lieder
Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
Um Mitternacht
(Royal Festival Hall, London, 6 July 1970, Karl Engel, piano)
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
2 Songs Op.5 (K.34)
A közelítő tél
Sírni, sírni, sírni
Kádár Kata K.127
(Royal Festival Hall, London, 3 June 1960, London Symphony Orchestra/ Zoltán Kodály)
Interviews from 2000 & 2005 with Jon Tolansky
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