Zwei sonore, atmosphärische dichte und kraftvolle Interpretationen mit Kempffs hellwachem, glockigem Klavierton und Maazels schwungvollem Dirigieren, dies ganz besonders in der Haydn-Symphonie, wo der Dirigent auch relativ zügige, drängende Tempi wählt.

Heinz Tietjen, mächtigster Theaterintendant aller Zeiten, zudem Regisseur und...

Four days before Furtwängler died in Baden-Baden (on November 30, 1954) his arch-rival Herbert von Karajan was conducting Verdi's Messa da Requiem at the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, a compelling performance now available on Orfeo and featuring the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and a fine (and relatively young) vocal line-up of Antonietta Stella, Oralia Dominguez, Nicolai Gedda and Giuseppe Modesti. I was amazed at just how different this 1954 performance is to another vintage Karajan-led Vienna Requiem recently released by Audite, a performance taped at the 1949 Salzburg Festival with a less consistent but none the less distinguished quartet of soloists – Hilde Zadek, Margarete Klose, Helge Roswaenge (effortful and weighty in comparison with the incendiary performance he gave under Toscanini in London in 1938) and Boris Christoff, captured in his magnificent early prime. The 1954 version is swifter than its predecessor by around five minutes and there are countless subtle differences in terms of articulation and phrasing, and yet both offer valuable insights into an evolving interpretation.

Still, I doubt if Karajan conducted Verdi's Requiem quite as often as Géza Anda played Bartók's Second Piano Concerto, which was more than 300 times. Volume 4 of Audite's unmissable Géza Anda “Edition” includes a light and fiery 1952 Salzburg performance under Fricsay, troubled only occasionally by some quirky balancing. The First Concerto (1957) under Michael Gielen, which is among the most playful versions I've ever heard, is rather better in that respect. The second disc includes a work that I don't recall ever hearing Anda play, the Contrasts, where the earnest violinist is Tibor Varga and the clarinettist the WDR Symphony Orchestra's Paul Blöcher. Here, as in the wonderful Suite, Op 14, Anda's performance combines flexibility – it's almost rhapsodic at times – with an acute feeling for colour and rhythm. Another Anda “first”, at least as far as CD is concerned, is the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion where his duet partner is none other than Georg Solti.

Again, tone colouring and nuance are the principle virtues and if the first movement's shifting rhythmic patterns are sometimes less than watertight, a sense of elemental energy more than compensates. The sound quality is fairly good and I would enthusiastically urge all Bartókians to invest without delay. These sorts of releases tend to have rather short shelf lives.

Four days before Furtwängler died in Baden-Baden (on November 30, 1954) his arch-rival Herbert von Karajan was conducting Verdi's Messa da Requiem at the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, a compelling performance now available on Orfeo and featuring the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and a fine (and relatively young) vocal line-up of Antonietta Stella, Oralia Dominguez, Nicolai Gedda and Giuseppe Modesti. I was amazed at just how different this 1954 performance is to another vintage Karajan-led Vienna Requiem recently released by Audite, a performance taped at the 1949 Salzburg Festival with a less consistent but none the less distinguished quartet of soloists – Hilde Zadek, Margarete Klose, Helge Roswaenge (effortful and weighty in comparison with the incendiary performance he gave under Toscanini in London in 1938) and Boris Christoff, captured in his magnificent early prime. The 1954 version is swifter than its predecessor by around five minutes and there are countless subtle differences in terms of articulation and phrasing, and yet both offer valuable insights into an evolving interpretation.

Still, I doubt if Karajan conducted Verdi's Requiem quite as often as Géza Anda played Bartók's Second Piano Concerto, which was more than 300 times. Volume 4 of Audite's unmissable Géza Anda “Edition” includes a light and fiery 1952 Salzburg performance under Fricsay, troubled only occasionally by some quirky balancing. The First Concerto (1957) under Michael Gielen, which is among the most playful versions I've ever heard, is rather better in that respect. The second disc includes a work that I don't recall ever hearing Anda play, the Contrasts, where the earnest violinist is Tibor Varga and the clarinettist the WDR Symphony Orchestra's Paul Blöcher. Here, as in the wonderful Suite, Op 14, Anda's performance combines flexibility – it's almost rhapsodic at times – with an acute feeling for colour and rhythm. Another Anda “first”, at least as far as CD is concerned, is the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion where his duet partner is none other than Georg Solti.

Again, tone colouring and nuance are the principle virtues and if the first movement's shifting rhythmic patterns are sometimes less than watertight, a sense of elemental energy more than compensates. The sound quality is fairly good and I would enthusiastically urge all Bartókians to invest without delay. These sorts of releases tend to have rather short shelf lives.

By 1949 word was spreading of a new baritone sensation from Berlin, heir-apparent to Janssen and Hüsch. The radio recording of “Lebewohl” Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau made that year shows a voice of velvet, rounded beauty, and the singer's characteristic way of maintaining intensity to the very ends of phrases. In 1951 and 1955 he recorded 17 more Mörike songs for radio with the sympathetic Hertha Klust. His mastery of colouring and nuance is already in evidence, along with an almost neuropathic sensibility. “Der Genesene an die Hoffnung”, the convalescent's song that Wolf placed symbolically at the head of the collection, is mesmerising. Other songs seem excessively drawn out, above all the nostalgic “Im Frühling”, sung as if in a trance, in defiance of Wolfs marking gemächlich – comfortably. Elsewhere his restless urge to dramatise can lead to overkill – in the knowingly underlined Sturm (storm) in “Begegnung”, or the close of “Selbstgeständnis”, where the spoilt only child's final confession (“The odd thrashing would have done me a power of good”) sounds aggressively hectoring rather than ironically humorous.

Premier volume de ce qui pourrait être un parcours Wolf avec Dietrich...

Premier volume de ce qui pourrait être un parcours Wolf avec Dietrich...

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Les Mandelring (Audite, 2003) retiennent l’attention par leur...

Zwei herausragende Schostakowitsch-CDs hat das Mandelring Quartett im Rahmen ihrer Gesamteinspielung schon vorgelegt. Gestalterische Expressivität verbindet sich bei den Pfälzern mit klanglicher Differenzierung und einem zwar klugen, aber nie kopflastigen interpretatorischen Zugriff. Ihr ausgewogener, eher dunkel timbrierter Ensembleklang verleiht auch Schostakowitschs fünftem Quartett die nötige emotionale Tiefe. In der Durchführung des Kopfsatzes wird der Streicherklang bis zum Zerbersten gespannt, der zweite Satz berührt gerade in seiner Zerbrechlichkeit. Und wenn sich wie bei den atemberaubend schnell musizierten Finali der Quartette 7 und 9 die geschärften Linien eng miteinander verzahnen, kann man nur noch staunen.

Bis vor einigen Jahren war Friedrich Gernsheim nur Musikwissenschaftlern ein...