Schumann: So wahr die Sonne scheinet, Op. 37, No. 12

Today we can only have a limited idea of a musical soireé in the home of the Schumanns. On this CD, the Calmus Ensemble provides a sketch of one such possible evening. Invited guests formed a small vocal ensemble to sing the newest vocal compositions, Clara and Robert Schumann played their newest pieces on the piano, Brahms probably visited and surely music by Bach would have been performed.

Together with the soloists Christine Wolff, Britta Schwarz, and Maria Graf, Rondeau Production approaches this Romantic Zeitgeist from a new perspective: well-known and unknown duets are clothed in fresh robes by the accompanying harp, and the spirit of chamber music making in private homes is reawakened.

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.