Search - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Franz [Vienna] Schubert, Gerald Moore :: Schubert:Winterreise D.911

Everyone has a favorite F-D "Winterreise" -- this is mine

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 01/17/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's usually not a reliable indicator when someone says, "I never like X, but this is one performance I love." But that's the case with me and Fischer-Dieskau's five or six Winterreises. Since the mid-Sixties I've bought one LP or CD after another but never return to any of them. Is it the singer's barking, his overdone articulation of words, his lack of inwardness? All of that, but ultimately it comes down to a lack of connection. I feel the same lack with Ian Bostridge, Matthias Goerne, Wolfgang Holzmair, and a few other lieder specialists who have legions of dedicated followers.



Easy as it is for me to live without F-D, this Winterreise from Aug. 1971 does connect with me -- in fact, I was engrossed by the singer's emotional genuineness, something I rarely feel from him, and a total absence of artistic posing. F-D abandons his vocal tricks and sings these bitterly beaautiful songs as sincerely and diretly as I've heard him sing anything (although he is at his most convincing as a young man in the mid-Fifties). Gerald Moore has also never impressed me greatly -- not compaed to Edwin Fischer, Benjamin Britten, Sviatoslav Richter, and Alfred Brendel when they accompany Schubert. Here he's his usual plain, reliable, discreet self. I know I sound as if I'm delivering back-handed compliments, but I am a Fischer-Dieskau apostate, and it surprises me how touching I found this impressive CD. DG's sonics are quite good except for a metallic edge when the singer is at his loudest, which isn't often."

Wonderful

G.D. | Norway | 05/22/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Fischer-Dieskau has recorded Winterreise numerous times (there are at least 10 versions out there), and while I cannot claim to have heard anywhere near all of them, this version (from 1971) must surely be one of the most stirring. Despite the fact that there are several fabulous versions of Schubert's masterpiece out there, there is a sense in which this work "belongs to" Fischer-Dieskau (or at least that is the impression one gets when listening to a performance like this). Always fresh but thoughtful, authoritative but achingly beautiful, subtle and refined, this performance also has the benefit of a very fine analogue recording - it might not be sonically spectacular by today's standards, but the perspective is good and the sound picture is warm and clear and spacious.



Some might perhaps complain that Fischer-Dieskau's more classically restrained performance here fails to convey the same power and intensity as some of his earlier versions. I guess there is a point to be made there - maybe the drama is less vivid - but to me the added subtlety in coloration and drama adds another dimension to the work, a subtle buildup to the heart-wrenching bleakness of the final songs and by which the performers realize the connections between the moods of the various songs more convincingly. The singing (and playing) is also wonderfully phrased with a "Gute Nacht" and a "der Wegweiser" which must surely be unchallenged on disc - in addition to the magically understated "der Leiermann". It is utterly captivating, and it is to no little extent due to Gerald Moore's thoughtful and sensitive accompaniment. I am not going to claim that it unequivocally replaces the earlier effort(s) by Fischer-Dieskau and Moore, but I cannot imagine anyone listening to this disc without being thoroughly mesmerized. Urgently recommended."