Jared wrote:Schubert: Die Schone Mullerin...
... again (!)
My top ten recordings of Die Schöne Müllerin:
1. Fritz Wunderlich/Hubert Giesen (DG). God given voice, ideal interpreter, this recording has NEVER been out of print and is almost everyone´s favourite. Quite simply a must have.
2. Fritz Wunderlich/Kurt Heinz-Stolze (BMG). A rare, hard to get earlier version recorded in 1957. Superb of course, but Wunderlich was more mature and familiar with the cycle in the DG recording.
3. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau/Jörg Demus. DFD has made more recordings of Die Schöne Müllerin than anyone else, needless to say all of historical importance. His first recording was made shortly after the War, but his first for a major label was a 1951 with Gerald Moore for EMI. In the early 60´s he rerecorded it with Moore in stereo also for EMI, a vocally stunning, almost perfect version, and then in the mid 60´s he made this version with Jörg Demus for DG that remained unplublished for decades maybe because of the success of the contemporary Wunderlich recording. It´s also impossibly perfect, flawless, glorious, and if I had to choose only 1 DFD version, this would be it, but all are the work of possibly the greatest Schubert singer ever.
4. Aksel Schiötz/Gerald Moore. This marvelous Danish tenor made too few recordings, but his Schöne Müllerin is excellent evidence of his supreme art. It is said that by 1945 when this recording was made, he had developed vocal problems and was no longer in best voice, but hell, I have never heard them.
5. Peter Schreier/Andras Schiff. Surely after DFD, Peter Schreier has made more recordings of the Müller cycle than anyone else, even one with guitar accompaniment (with lutenist Konrad Ragossnig playing an early XIX Century guitar). Like DFD, this is Master Singer singing of the highest order. Of all his recordings I like the Schiff best, the sheer understanding and art of this man are a wonder, all that was missing was a voice of Wunderlich quality.
6. Martyn Hill/Graham Johnson. This 1983 recording was one of Hyperion´s very first recordings, sadly never reissued on cd. When I met the late, great Ted Perry (Hyperion´s founder) in a dinner in Cannes, I asked him why this great recording was still awaiting it´s first cd appearance, and he told me that it needed to be reedited, since there was an even better performance in the master tapes than the one that made the final cut ("we were kind of inexperience at the time" he said).
Well, we are still waiting.
But a word on Martyn Hill. His light, sweet, lyric tenor and baroque experience perhaps make him the closest interpreter to what Schubert might have heard. This is an important recording and is much missed, I take it any day over the much lauded Ian Bostridge version also on Hyperion.
7. Ian Partridge/ Jennifer Partridge. This modest recording for Classics for Pleasure is anything but modest in quality. Ian Partridge like Martyn Hill comes from Baroque music, but he is a well seasoned, intelligent Lieder singer. A lovely recording.
8. Hans-Peter Blochwitz/Cord Garben (DG). Hans-Peter Blochwitz had perhaps the most beautiful voice of any German tenor since Wunderlich. Like Wunderlich he excelled in Mozart tenor roles, and recorded Tamino with Harnoncourt and William Christie. I love his Schöne Müllerin, but unfortunately the piano accompaniment is hardly in the Moore or Schiff class.
9. Olaf Bär/Geoffrey Parsons. East German baritone Olaf Bär was in his late 20´s when he made this recording for the now defunct East German label Eterna in the early 80´s. Bär, with his warm, virile, but sweet voice immediately made an impression and became a star. At the time he seemed the natural heir to DFD and Hermann Prey. This is a fresh, youthful and very touching performance, no, I don´t think we overrated him at the time.
10. Francisco Araiza/Irwin Gage (DG). I have to confess a little national pride in this one. My compatriot, Francisco Araiza left Mexico in his early 20´s to study in Germany. Almost overnight he was in demand in several theaters in Germany and Austria, singing Monteverdi for Harnoncourt (he can be seen still in his 20´s in the Ponnelle/Harnoncourt Monteverdi dvd cycle in DG), and recording Don Pasquale with Lucia Popp for Eurodisc. It was not long before he caught Herbert von Karajan´s attention and he chose him for his recording of The Magic Flute, the very first digital opera recording of DG. Araiza mastered admirably the German language, and he is perhaps the first tenor in history equally able to sing Barbiere and Cenerentola in Italian and Die Zauberflöte and Die Entführung aus dem Serail in German. He is still the only Spanish speaking singer to have recorded Lieder for Deutsche Grammophon. His Schöne Müllerin recorded in 1985 when he was in his prime, is excellent, sung with more abandon and passion than many of his German colleagues. Tragically Araiza was not content to be the World´s finest Mozart and Rossini tenor (He recorded Viaggio a Reims with Abbado, Rosenkavalier with Carlos Kleiber, Das Lied von der Erde with Giulini, Barbiere and Cenerentola with Marriner, The Creation and Falstaff with Karajan, you name it) he also wanted to sing the spinto repertoire, and tried his luck with Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger, Don Carlos, Tosca...things that were much too heavy for him, and by the mid 90´s his beautiful voice was ruined.
His sin was greed, he had everything and wanted even more.
But his DG Die Schöne Müllerin shows just how phenomenally gifted he was, and even though there are plenty more great Schöne Müllerins with the likes of Hermann Prey, Anton Dermota, Ernest Haëfliger, Julius Patzak, Christian Gerhaher and even Jonas Kaufmann!!! I leave it just here.
