Edwin Fischer: The Legacy of a Great Pianist (1943-1953)

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Between the Bliss and Me is a wonderful collection of musical settings of poems by the great American poet, Emily Dickinson. The CD gathers compositions which might be familiar to some listeners, particularly the settings composed by Aaron Copland, but there are also works by lesser known composers such as Ernst Bacon, John Duke, Arthur Farwell, Scott Gendel, Lori Laitman and Richard Pearson-Thomas which add an extra dimension to Dickinson's genius. Unlike most modern art song, the songs on this CD have a refreshing melodic quality.

Annie Fischer enjoys a singular reputation within the great tradition of Hungarian pianists due to her deeply moving and romantically intimate performances. She became famous and admired on account of her uncompromising spiritually absorbing interpretations. Like many other musicians, Fischer only left behind a few studio recordings however the few that were left became benchmark interpretations.

WAGNER Tannhäuser • Joseph Keilberth, cond; Ramón Vinay ( Tannhäuser ); Gré Brouwenstijn ( Elisabeth ); Herta Wilfert ( Venus ); Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau ( Wolfram von Eschenbach ); Josef Greindl ( Landgraf Hermann ); Volker Horn ( Shepherd ); Josef Traxel ( Walther von der Vogelweide ); Gerhard Stolze ( Heinrich der Schreiber ); Toni Blankenheim ( Biterolf ); Theo Adam ( Reinmar von Zweter ); Bayreuth Festival O & Ch • ANDROMEDA 5162, mono (3 CDs: 183:10) Live: Bayreuth 7/22/1954


I’d really like to know why so many Wagner lovers have a bee in their bonnet over Josef Keilberth. So often in others’ reviews I read that he was routine, dull, unimaginative, etc., etc., yet I’ve always liked his conducting. Even as far back as my earliest years in college, when I was absorbing the Wagner canon from old LP recordings in the library ( Lohengrin with Steber and Windgassen, Fliegende Holländer with Varnay and Uhde, etc.), I always found Keilberth’s conducting well-paced, beautifully phrased and articulated as well as urgent in dramatic scope, and so I find it here. Even as early as the Overture (the Paris version, so it connects to the Venusberg music), Keilberth sounds as if he’s on a mission, and that mission is to make Tannhäuser’s story as thrilling as is humanly possible.


The problem with this release is the sound quality of the orchestra. I don’t know whether this recording stems from an in-house tape or a broadcast, but whichever it is the orchestral sound is harsh. The strings grate, the brasses spit, and the timpani sound like someone hitting a garbage can with mallets. And yet, this is an improvement over the one previous issue I’ve heard on Melodram, which was actually worse than this: The sound was both grating and muddy. At least Andromeda was able to clarify the sound and remove most of the surface noise, and happily the poor sound only affects the loud orchestral passages (like the Overture and the beginning of act II), not the singing. It should be noted that the cover of this release claims all-new 24-bit remastering, although like so many off-brand reissues of classic broadcasts, it has no libretto.


The only somewhat weak link in the cast is Wilfert as Venus. She is just OK. Her voice is not tonally pretty or very expressive except that she yells a good deal, and as I’ve said many times, yelling is not an interpretation. She also has a weak low range, which makes her descents in the scale disappointing. (Yet later on in the scene, the voice becomes less tense and she actually sings the written trills, something many Venuses ignore.) Vinay takes a while to warm up, sounding clumsy in Tannhäuser’s more elegant lines and lacking ease in singing the turns (mordents) in “Dir töne Lob.” Yes, he was an outstanding actor, both visually (which of course we can’t see here) and vocally, and that helps in many scenes of the opera, but I’d have liked a bit more suavity in the opening scene.


Once we leave the Venusberg, however, things brighten up considerably. A quick look at the cast list explains why. We have not only seasoned veterans Greindl and Traxel as Hermann and Walther and the still-young but already-legendary Fischer-Dieskau as Wolfram, but also several singers who would, within a decade, become important artists in their own right, namely Theo Adam, Toni Blankenheim, and Gerhard Stolze. As an extra bonus we get the great Gré Brouwenstijn who, along with Cristina Deutekom, was God’s gift to the soprano world from the Netherlands during the 20th century, as Elisabeth. (I should also mention that boy soprano Horn as the Shepherd is exceptionally good.) In addition, the microphone placement, which makes the orchestra sound so harsh, seems to be perfect for the voices, which all sound right and natural. As the opera progresses, Vinay’s voice brightens and loosens up a little, which is all to the good. (While listening, I kept trying to figure out whose voice he reminded me of; the closest I could come was Bernd Weikl if Weikl sang tenor.)


In act II, the vocal acting reaches new heights. Seldom have I heard Elisabeth sung with such nuance and attention to detail as she is here by Brouwenstijn; listen to the way she paints the words in “Was war es dann,” for instance, and as opposed to Vinay, her vocal elegance in singing the mordents is flawless. Griendl, who could at times sing with a loose vibrato and unfocused tone (as in his studio recordings of Tristan und Isolde and Die Zauberflöte ), is in excellent voice, particularly in the low range, and his singing in “Gar viel und schön ward hier” is both powerful and well-nuanced. I found it ironic that “Blick’ ich umher,” which is supposed to be sung somewhat clumsily by Wolfram (the reason he loses the song contest to Tannhäuser), is so elegantly and beautifully vocalized by Fischer-Dieskau that it almost sounds as if he were giving a Lieder recital. Yet, all in all, the drama builds during this act more suspensefully than I’ve heard it in any other performance of the opera. It’s absolutely hair-raising.


Happily, the Prelude to act III is recorded much better than most of the other orchestral music, possibly because it is mostly played softly. The Pilgrims’ Chorus, taken by Keilberth at a quicker than normal tempo, may sound a tad glib to seasoned Wagnerians yet it still manages to sound fervent, and Brouwenstijn’s ensuing aria (“Allmächt’ge Jungfrau”) is sung with rapturous feeling. Needless to say, “O du mein holder Abendstern” is sung beautifully, but what’s interesting to me about young Fischer-Dieskau is that it was his low range that was better than later on (a situation that made his mid-1970s recording of Die Meistersinger so disappointing). Vinay’s voice, ironically, sounds even deeper than Wolfram’s (later on in his career, he returned to singing baritone and then even sang bass!), but he is locked into the character here, so his “Rome narrative” is movingly and dramatically sung with full attention to words, and his death scene is indescribably moving.


The bottom line, then, is that if you really love Tannhäuser you need to own this performance. Because of the sound quality and lack of a libretto it’s not a first choice—that plum goes to the Dernesch-Kollo-Braun-Solti stereo set on Decca—but all things being equal, the singers are recorded so well that if you simply ignore the harshness of the purely orchestral passages (particularly the loud ones), you’re in for an extraordinary treat. This was a Wieland Wagner production, and somehow or other he and Keilberth got the whole cast to perform at white heat.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Every Wagner fanatic knows the famous 1961 Philips label live recording of Der fliegende Holländer with Franz Crass as Holländer. Herewith, Andromeda presents the radio broadcast of the 1961 Bayreuth production which was recorded with the legendary George London, who gave here one of his best interpretations of the Holländer role. This recording shows once again that Mr. London was and remains unsurpassed as the demonic but for forgiveness-begging Holländer. Starring, in addition, Anja Silja, Fritz Uhl and Josef Greindl, this is the First Release in any format of this performance.

Sviatoslav Richter’s comment that Hungarian-born Annie Fischer (1914–1995) was ‘a great artist imbued with a spirit of greatness and genuine profundity’ is just a sign of the esteem in which her fellow musicians held her. Curiously, of all the mid-century pianists, she seems to have been among the least recorded due to her profound dislike of the studio. Annie Fischer’s ‘unerring awareness’ (David Threasher) of the shifting moods in the Schumann Piano Concerto has been caught in wonderful sound by the WDR engineers in this ‘live’ recording which has never been issued before. In the two Beethoven works, ‘she is powerfully authoritative’ (David Threasher). Both these ‘live’ recordings are available for this first time on this release. All these recordings are great additions to her relatively small discography.

Hans Werner Henze called the opera of Pollicino and Clotide that he wrote in his adopted homeland of Italy, based on the tale of Tom Thumb as told by Collodi, a "fairy tale for music," and dedicated it to the children of Montepulciano. The opera deals with matters of life and death, difficult relationships between parents and children, poverty and hunger, staying in and being freed from inhuman conditions. The little hero, Pollicino (Italian: "little thumb"), and his six brothers who have to seek for shelter in the house of Orco, the maneater (whose daughters are Clotilde and her six sisters), because poverty drove them away from home, have to go through several adventures before they all together manage to turn their fate for the better. First recording with extensive booklet and German-English libretto.

There is to be a journey, not too far away, because, after all, it's nicest at home, isn't it? A journey for invited guests, offshore and onshore, by boat and by bus, and a few steps on foot. A journey full of surprises. A journey as a performance. A journey into the night... When looking for a word to best describe Harald Weiss' musical oeuvre, the most applicable certainly appears to be "cross-over". He has been honored with numerous prizes and awards for his artistic work: among others, the Rome Scholarship of the Villa Massimo, the Lower Saxony Scholarship for Film and Music, and a prize from the Premier TV station for his video clips.

This new release features Saint-Saëns' Second Piano Concerto with Nelson Freire under the baton of AdAm Fischer. Not many pianists are able to accomplish the stylistic and technical challenges of this concerto, demanding complete precision in fingering and leaps, as well as perfect command of the "jeu perlé": Nelson Freire masters this work with great aplomb, quiet assurance and, at times, a twinkle in his eye. He is completely committed and happy to take risks, triggering veritable "Sturm und Drang", and always congenially accompanied by AdAm Fischer. Twenty years previously, the Brazilian pianist (then aged 22) had made his German radio debut with a recital programme which he recorded at the RIAS's Lankwitz studio in Berlin. In Grieg's Lyric Pieces and the Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos 5 and 10 by Liszt, as well as his Polonaise in E major, Freire not only demonstrated his stupendous manual prowess, but also what was already at that stage his extraordinary touch and stylistic confidence. These early solo recordings anticipate his brilliant later style, completing the picture of the exceptional pianist. All recordings on this album are released for the first time.

Classical Music

16.99

Conductor Adam Fischer reflects on Mahler’s Third Symphony: “Mahler’s entire output seems like one long farewell to me: it is as if he was bidding farewell to the past and likewise to the future, since he had a great fear of death. At the end of his symphonies we often encounter utopias, as here in the Adagio of the Third, and many years later, particularly, in the Ninth. Something new sets in, but the movement is still a closure. From it we learn that whatever is new will no longer occur in this world. The Third Symphony, on the whole, is one of Mahler’s richest: the individual movements are so different from one another that they almost seem to stem from different periods of Mahler’s life. The Third contains its own world in itself- already in the first movement, longer than most Beethoven symphonies. Then Mahler plunges into the Wunderhorn world: the world of simplicity where his style seems inspired by Schubert. He quotes from his own works and creates his own mythology. Just as in a grand novel, the same figures appear in different stories. The second and third movements belong together; then, a new dimension is introduced in the fourth one with the human voice. With the contralto’s first note, Mahler truly opens up a new world. This is a new kind of composition altogether. The measures almost seem to flow into one another; Mahler is freeing himself from the rigors of rhythmic bars… This abandonment of the rigorous diktat of meter represents a challenge for every conductor.”

The pieces on this album are world premieres, commissioned for the Utah Symphony’s 75th anniversary. The works on this album are from composers Augusta Read Thomas, Nico Muhly, and Andrew Norman. The Utah Symphony became widely recognized as a leading ensemble after its inception in 1940. The symphony is under the direction of Thierry Fischer.

Reviews:

This excellent release presents three inviting, evocative new works commissioned and recorded to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Utah Symphony. Each piece is a unique, virtuosic essay for the ensemble, and Thierry Fischer leads his players with confidence through a daunting program, captured in stunning sound.

This is essential listening for fans of new American orchestral music. The triptych gives a fascinating cross-section of current trends, and Reference Recordings’ “Fresh!” moniker is an incredibly accurate description of the results. The notes on the pieces are by the composers themselves, and it is interesting to see how the prose and musical writing mirror each other. Full personnel listing of the wonderful Utah Symphony is included. Recorded sound is demonstration quality. Highly recommended!

– Concerto.net (Marcus Karl Maroney)

Dawn to Dust' is the apt title of this new release on the Reference Recordings Fresh! label of works commissioned from three leading American contemporary composers by the Utah Symphony as part of the orchestra's 75th anniversary celebrations during the 2015/2016 season. All three works here receive their world premier recordings in scrupulously prepared performances conducted by Thierry Fischer, the orchestra's Music Director.

As is to be expected from this audiophile label, the sound quality is awesome. The wide dynamic range of the recording allows both the subtlest string pianissimos and the loudest percussive climaxes to be reproduced with equal fidelity – every instrument clearly identified within a soundstage that possesses convincing width and depth. Though recorded live, audience noise is inaudible and applause has also been excised.

Exemplary notes on these compositions written by their respective composers complete this stimulating release.

– HRAudio.net (Graham Williams)

This new release has been long anticipated, and concludes Ars Produktion’s discographic documentation of one of the most outstanding German theater scene Ring productions. This production of Wagner’s Ring cycle from 1997/1999 received international enthusiasm from critics due to its amazing artistic interpretation and musical skill. This special release includes a bonus CD with an interview featuring famed opera journalist Thomas Voigt and the director of the Staatstheater Kassel, Michael Leinert.

The Cleveland Orchestra is the "aristocrat among American orchestras" (The Telegraph) and the ensemble's music director, Franz Welser-M�st, leads them with verve and precision. This three DVD set from Belvedere features a 'cycle' of all the major orchestral works by Johannes Brahms. Included are the complete symphonies and piano concertos, the violin concerto, the Tragic Overture, the Academic Festival Overture and the Haydn Variations. Soloists include violinist Julia Fischer and pianist Yefim Bronfman.

Classical Music

STRAVINSKY; POULENC; LIADOV BBC NATIONAL ORCHESTRA OF WALES; FISCHER (COND.) MUSIC FROM DIAGHILEV'S BALLET RUSSES- STRAVINSKY: THE FIREBIRD, THE RITE OF SPRING, PETRUSHKA, SCHERZO FANTASTIQUE; LIADOV: BABA-YAGA, THE ENCHANTED LAKE. KIKIMORA; POULENC: LES BICHES

Classical Music

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)Anatoly Liadov (1855-1914) BBC National Orchestra of WalesThierry Fischer Stravinsky: PetrushkaLiadov: Baba-yagaLiadov: The Enchanted LakeLiadov: Kikimora

BRINK, Bert van den: Bert van den Brink invites Clare Fische

Classical Music

Principal trombonist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Jörgen van Rijen is also much in demand as a soloist with a special commitment to promoting his instrument. Various composers have written new pieces for him, including James MacMillan and Theo Verbey, whose works are included on the present release together with Luciano Berio’s SOLO for trombone and orchestra. The present recordings were made at concerts with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer, Markus Stenz and Ed Spanjaard respectively. They have previously been showcased on three different discs on the RCO’s own Live Horizon label, and are gathered together here for the first time. The album therefore highlights the versatility of van Rijen as a musician, but also of his instrument as perceived and presented by three very different composers.

The Cleveland Orchestra is the “aristocrat among American orchestras” (The Telegraph) and its sovereign, Franz Welser-Möst, rules his subjects with a velvet glove. Indeed, velvet and silk keep showing up in descriptions of the Clevelanders’ sound under its principal conductor. It is Welser-Möst’s nimble alternation between smoothness and a sound that’s as “sharp-edged as a skyscraper” (The Telegraph after the Brahms’ First at the orchestra’s London Proms concert). That keeps the ensemble and the audience figuratively on its toes. Brahms’ Fourth and last Symphony could be said to glow with autumnal colors. Endowed with a strong undercurrent of subdued melancholy, it seems to pine for an irretrievable past. Franz Welser-Möst offers a “lean, propulsive performance” (The Plain Dealer) of this work with his highly concentrated Cleveland Orchestra. The swift pace of the symphony in Welser-Möst’s hands reflects the conductor’s quest for a distinctive, far-from-the-mainstream interpretation. Written nearly contemporaneously in the late 1870s, Johannes Brahms’ rousing Academic Festival Overture and Violin Concerto op. 77 bear witness to a composer at the height of his abilities, a mature master of large-scale masterpieces. The Violin Concerto demands extreme technical proficiency. As if to exemplify this, violinist Julia Fischer gears herself from the very start of this emotionally searing work to maintaining a restrained yet passionate tone.

Foremost among Swedish Baroque composers, Johan Helmich Roman travelled to England then to France, Italy, Austria and Germany, gaining valuable firsthand knowledge of European music. At home in Stockholm he conducted the court orchestra, introduce.