Schubert’s tragic song cycle Winterreise, conceived
in two sets of a dozen songs each, was written in February 1827, the
year before his death; indeed he was correcting the proofs of the second
dozen of the twenty-four as he lay on his death-bed. A note of deep
melancholy and loneliness pervades the songs, most of which are in the
minor mode, but there are exceptions, the demure start and conclusion
to ‘Frühlingstraum’, or the half-playful picture of the street
minstrel in the final ‘Der Leiermann’. But there is a grimly autobiographical
element as the defiance against winter storms gradually gets worn down
to distraught weariness as he approaches the grave in ‘Das Wirtshaus’.
Schubert’s greatness in the field of the song-cycle
has been incontestable from the outset, because the kaleidoscopic range
of emotion and the unceasing musical invention in them is nothing short
of miraculous. It would not be fanciful to say that the art of setting
the Lied begins with Schubert, and then taken further by Schumann, Brahms
and Hugo Wolf. He was about thirty years old when he wrote Winterreise,
so was the poet Wilhelm Müller, and even Fischer-Dieskau when he
made this recording in January 1955. Somehow this common denominator
makes it more special, though later recordings do inevitably bring a
maturer, more experienced element to his interpretation of the darker
songs in the cycle. He and Gerald Moore had first worked together three
years earlier at the Edinburgh Festival, after which Fischer-Dieskau
went on to a forty-year career as a Lieder singer, with ten years less
as an opera singer. The pair of them recorded the cycle twice more,
in 1965 and 1972 and later versions tended to be more perceptive and
deeply imagined than this freshly youthful first essay. The cycle was
originally conceived for a higher voice (many would therefore prefer
Pears accompanied by Britten) but the dark vocal colours add a unique
element and produce a consistently remarkable interpretation. Fischer-Dieskau
has always had a reputation for the cerebral approach, clinically detailed,
impeccably accurate in his enunciation, sometimes over-emphasising climaxes
or stressing certain words at the expense of a singer’s vital sense
of legato line and architectural sweep - too clever for his own good.
But here there are no such stilted mannerisms, neither is there is any
lack of variety in tone and colour contrasts, rather the performances
are deeply perceptive, full of subtle nuance, finely honed detail and
brimful of intense atmosphere, and with him, every step of the way,
are the uniquely sensitive accompaniments of that doyen of British musicians,
Gerald Moore.
As part of the series ‘Great
Recordings of the Century’, this disc has a place by right and will
disappoint no lover of Schubert, Fischer-Dieskau or Moore.
Christopher Fifield
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
(baritone)