Brahms: Regenlied (No. 3 from Acht Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 59)

‘You sing as if you had written it yourself!’ Jean Cocteau once told Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. This anthology of lieder by Brahms and Schumann is a prime example of the great singer doing just that, mining every nuance of emotion from a song while, at the same time, sounding as spontaneous and free as if he were making it up on the spot. One of the hallmarks of Fischer-Dieskau’s legacy is the ease with which he creates the spell of each individual song, drawing the listener – apparently effortlessly – into the drama created by the words and the music.

Fischer-Dieskau recorded extensively for Deutsche Grammophon, and the bulk of his archive has been mined on CDs. These recordings, however, are rarities. The songs on CD1 appeared only as part of the Fischer-Dieskau Edition for his 75th birthday. The Brahms songs on CD2 make their first appearance on CD. And the 1957 recording of Schumann’s Dichterliebe with his long-time pianist Jörg Demus, only appeared as part of Deutsche Grammophon’s centenary edition. CD2 includes the Four Duets, Op. 28 in which Fischer-Dieskau is partnered by an artist not heard enough on records, the contralto Kerstin Meyer.

This release marks the launch of an Eloquence series of notable recitals of songs and opera arias by some of the great voices of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon.

Following the iconic series of the complete songs of Schubert and Schumann, Graham Johnson’s latest enterprise traverses the complete songs of Brahms. He is joined here on Volume 2 by the wonderful Christine Schäfer, whose contribution to the Schumann song series won a prestigious Gramophone Award.

Each volume in the series takes us on a journey through Brahms’s career, from youthful settings to songs of maturity. Volume 2 includes a selection of delightful Mädchenlieder and concludes with a handful of Brahms’s intimate folksong settings.

Discerningly partnered by Graham Johnson, Christine Schäfer is in perfect voice. She sings with a pure, luminous tone, crystal clear diction and eloquent phrasing, making this a superb recital in its own right. As part of the wider survey of the complete songs of Brahms, it will take an essential place in any Lieder-lover’s collection.

Lenneke Ruiten is quickly establishing herself as one of the leading sopranos of her generation. She started her tuition with Maria Rondel en Meinard Kraak in The Hague, and subsequently took lessons with Elle Ameling, Robert Holl, Hans Hotter, Walter Berry and Robert Tear.

Her breakthrough came with winning the International Vocalist Competition of ¡¥s Hertogenbosch. She sang in all the important opera houses of Europe, and with conductors like Gardiner, Bruggen, Biondi, Koopman, Dantone.

In 2011 she made her Salzburger Festspiele debut in Die Frau ohne Schatten conducted by Christian Thielemann. This well chosen selection of Brahms songs shows her warm timbre, her wide range of colours and her complete understanding of the text.

This highly regarded recording of a collection of lieder by Brahms was first released in 1982 and features one of the outstanding singers of her generation, the German mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender. The pianist is Irwin Gage, and they are joined on two of the songs by the viola player Thomas Riebl.

Brigitte Fassbaender’s international career took off when she appeared as Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1971. Since then she has appeared in all of the major opera houses around the world in roles such as as Clairon in Capriccio, the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos, Fricka in Die Walküre, Carmen in Carmen, Orlovsky in Die Fledermaus, Amneris in Aïda, Maddalena in Rigoletto, Eboli in Don Carlos, and Klytemnestra in Elektra. Brigitte Fassbaender has also been successful as a lieder singer. In 1987, she won a Gramophone Award for her Deutsche Gramophon disc of songs by Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss.

Johannes Brahms was a prolific composer of Lieder and wrote around 200 during his lifetime. The first collection appeared in 1853, when Brahms had just turned 20, and the last was published in 1896, just a few months before his death.

These releases from the archives of the RIAS and the Sender Freies Berlin document the unequalled quantitative and qualitative spectrum which baritone Fischer-Dieskau acquired during the five decades of his career.

They offer a fascinating insight into the breadth of his repertoire as well as his artistic approach, with which he maintained a careful balance of development and continuity until the end. These recordings – spanning Beethoven’s sacred songs Op. 48 of 1806, through Schumann, Brahms, Mahler and Reger, to Heinrich Sutermeister’s expressive psalm setting of 1948 – demonstrate the essential Fischer-Dieskau.

Not only do they document the artistic partnership with pianists such as Hertha Klust, Daniel Barenboim, Cord Garben, Aribert Reimann and Tamás Vásáry, but also the delightful collaboration with the organist Ulrich Bremsteller.

Furthermore, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau can be heard together with his wife and musical partner, Julia Varady. This is a documentary edition both in the sense of a historic and an artistic legacy: it reveals the riches of lieder from the last two centuries which Fischer-Dieskau, in his role of musical chronicler, made accessible for the present age; and it is an impressive record of an incomparable interpretational art, according to which word and music were always treated and realised as a unit.