Brahms: Sommerabend, Op. 85 No. 1

‘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.

Hans Mayer wrote “He knew exactly what he wanted to sing and how to go about it. The word ‘magnetism’ – so frequently misappropriated for all types of advertising – fully applied in his case.”

Beginning in the late 1940s “FiDi,” as he was already known in his Berlin years, elevated lied singing to an unparalleled level associated with his mellifluous baritone, superb vocal technique, and the credibility of his interpretations. Fortunately the persuasive powers of his early years are attested to not only by ear witnesses but by many radio recordings.

These two sets of lieder by Johannes Brahms and Ludwig van Beethoven are taken from two recording sessions held at Berlin’s RIAS broadcasting company in 1951/52.

Beethoven’s lieder did not belong to the standard repertoire at the time, and it was Fischer-Dieskau who first popularized them.

Hans Hotter was one of the major artists signed to EMI by the legendary record producer Walter Legge in Vienna as soon as the Second World War ended and one of his first recordings for the company was the Brahms Requiem under Herbert von Karajan, an extract from which is included in this set. This 6-CD set is devoted mainly to German Lieder and includes an impressive collection of songs recorded when Hotter was in his prime and generally accompanied by Gerald Moore. A number of tracks in this set are appearing in stereo for the first time on CD; their only previous stereo issue was on a local Angel LP in the USA.The two excerpts from Die Meistersinger are incomplete because the recordings were not released at the time they were made (1948) and some of the original 78 rpm masters had not survived by the time the items were issued on LP for the first time in 1982.