In September 1952 the young Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recorded these songs at the studio of RIAS in Berlin. It was the only time that the singer would work with Michael Raucheisen, at that time a leading champion of lieder. According to the liner notes, on the day of the recording, other musicians happened to be on hand, including the entire RIAS Chamber Chorus, and were evidently recruited on the spot to participate in the recording. The notes offer an interesting account of how this recording came to be.

How the music itself came to be is just as interesting. George Thompson, Edinburgh amateur musician, folksong collector, editor, and publisher, first commissioned Ignaz Pleyel, Leopold Kozeluch, and later (and most notably) Haydn to produce richer and more polished arrangements of Scottish songs that Thompson loved. From 1792 to 1804 Haydn wrote 429 arrangements. In 1806 Beethoven joined the project, replacing Haydn, who had withdrawn owing to his age. This recording includes the ten songs of Beethoven's Scottische Lieder, Op. 108, selections from groups of Irish and Welsh songs, and other folksongs.

F-D sings these with varied accompaniments of violin, cello, and chorus. His voice is at its loveliest, and the sound quality is very listenable. It's a bit of a novelty, and the lessoften heard whimsical and lighthearted side of the singer shines through delightfully. Notes, texts, translations.

This is Lucia in German! It has an all-German-Swiss cast of renowned lieder singers and Mozart specialists. Add to that the redoubtable F-D as Enrico (the villain) and we have perhaps the strangest Lucia recording ever.

Does it work? Not really. I very much doubt that bel canto opera lovers would prefer this over the recordings of Sutherland or Callas, or even Gruberova and Moffo. Also, in this performance, the first scene of Act 3 has been cut. The recording was made in 1953 in Berlin, just after Fricsay had resigned as Music Director of Berlin's Municipal Opera. So the singers and orchestra of that opera were no longer available to him, but he was still Chief Conductor of the RIAS Orchestra.

Maria Stader had a voice that was lyric, pure, and beautiful but not plush. She was a very stylish singer in her usual repertory (Bach, Mozart, Handel). Because she was so small, she was seldom seen on the opera stage. As Lucia, her voice is clear and steady, her coloratura accurate, and she has a nice trill. But her singing lacks temperament; it's more chirpy than expressive. Much the same, though to a lesser extent, is true of Ernst Haefliger's Edgardo. He was admired for the clarity of his voice, but it lacked warmth and romantic appeal. Stader and he sing well together but not in a style that's appropriate to this work. But F-D's Enrico is well realized; he seems at home in (almost) every opera. The minor characters are all at least adequate; so are chorus and orchestra.

Fricsay leads a precise and dynamic performance but it too lacks romantic flavor. The sound, for 1953, is remarkably good – detailed, clear, and warm. No texts or synopsis. For special tastes only!

This Hungarian conductor died young, in 1963 at less than 50. He had studied with Bartok and Kodaly but was also known as a Mozart specialist and recorded some of the operas as well as these symphonies. In fact, DG recorded these three symphonies at about the same time these recordings were made by the Berlin Radio; but DG used the Vienna Symphony. The Berlin Radio Orchestra (RIAS – Radio in the American Sector) was his own group, so these may be better than the DG recordings, which probably have not been issued on CD anyway. […]

When Romain Descharmes gave his Wigmore Hall debut in January 2007, soon after winning the Dublin competition, levels of anticipation and excitement were high. The hall was packed to the gunnels with support, but the results, for me at any rate, were underwhelming, with soggy Brahms and undistinguished Ravel. The highpoint was an unexpectedly high octane dose of Frederick Rzewski's Winnsboro Cotton Mill.

Both the Brahms and the Rzewski have made it on to disc. Now it is the turn of the Ravel, marking the pianist's recording debut with Audite performing on a Kawai piano. The exceptionally bright tone of the instrument works brilliantly – literally – for the first item on the disc, Valses nobles et sentimentales. Ravel's almost casual dissonances glisten and gleam like rough-cut jewels against the warm darkness of the acoustic of Berlin's Jesus-Christus-Kirche. To the pacing and balance of these deceptive dances Descharmes brings both intelligence and independence of mind, setting down an interpretation of these exciting and sometimes underappreciated pieces that deserves attention.

Whether the same can be said of the rest of the disc is less clear. Gaspard de la nuit, on the edge of ragged in the Wigmore Hall recital, is technically much more proficient, especially where the more restrained and confident pedalling is concerned. But there is little really dazzling about 'Ondine' and 'Le Gibet'. 'Scarbo', unusually in recordings of this work, is the most convincing.

With the Sonatine, full of delights though it is, you get the slightly tired sense that Descharmes has been playing it since shortly after coming out of nappies and hasn't really thought a great deal about his approach to it since. More interesting is the pianist's own transcription of La valse. Although the composer's own two-piano version may be familiar, his solo version of the work leaves much to be desired. Descharmes's arrangement works better and his warm-blooded and somewhat flirtatious performance brings a stimulating if not totally satisfying conclusion to this somewhat frustrating disc.

That's right, 115 minutes on one disc; but it’s the same performance. One layer gives us a sonic restoration to bring the recording into the SACD era, and the other is the unrestored stereo broadcast from 1962. The listener is invited to compare the two and – presumably – observe how much more brilliant, colorful, and lifelike the reworked recording is. Actually, there isn’t really all that much difference between the two. The SACD has perhaps a lower level of tape noise and a more solid and stable stereo image, but for me that's about it. I would be happier with an SACD recording of another of the composer's works – No. 4 or 9 would be fine. I suppose no appropriate source material is available.

The SACD Performance of No. 3 is nonetheless a very good one, with Kubelik and the fine BRSO in top form. An 1878 revision of the original score is employed, I suspect in an also reworked edition by Fritz Oeser, which Kubelik used in a 1985 recording of this same work on CBS Masterworks (that was also a good recording). This edition differs somewhat from the more concise Nowak score, particularly in I, where some rather interesting and invigorating material is retained at the expense of economy of means. The SACD sonic picture is smooth and rich in detail, with powerful bass response and good stereo imaging. This is a hybrid, and one layer can be played on a regular CD player with some slight loss of sonic quality.

This recording will obviously be expensive, and since it really offers only 58 minutes of program material, it is short on value-for-money. Though it is musically very good, it is not musically and sonically better than VPO/ Böhm on Decca (the standard edition). Nagano with the Deutsches Symphony on Harmonia Mundi is also a formidable rival that follows a much earlier (and longer) edition of the score. In this context, it is hard to issue a strong recommendation for this offering, except to listeners who prefer this particular edition or are avid admirers of Mr Kubelik.

Succédant à Jochum à la tête de la radio bavaroise, Kubelik n'a pas véritablement maintenu la tradition brucknérienne dont son prédécesseur s'était fait le héraut, préférant se concentrer sur Dvorak et Manier. Au disque, il n'a laissé officiellement que les Symphonies nos 3 et 4 gravées à l'aube des années 1980 pour Sony. Depuis, Orfeo a restitué des 8e et 9e en concert, une 6e existant également en DG « Originals ». Poursuivant l'exploration des bandes de la radio bavaroise, Audite exhume à son tour une 3e captée en 1962. La conception de Kubelik, qui utilise toujours la version intermédiaire de 1877, la plus équilibrée (mais dans l'édition Oeser, la seule alors disponible, qui omet la géniale coda du Scherzo), est très proche de celles connues par le disque Sony de 1980 ou le concert amstellodamois de 1954. Mise en valeur par une restauration techniquement splendide, l'interprétation est puissante, romantique, chaleureuse mais aussi parfois échevelée, au point de laisser la ligne directrice se perdre quelque peu au profit de l'engagement instantané - on a le sentiment que Kubelik pense plus à Schumann ou à un premier romantisme quasiment weberien qu'à Bruckner ou même Wagner, dédicataire de l'œuvre... L'orchestre n'est pas infaillible, et l'équilibre sonore parfois surprenant à l'image des premières mesures, pendant lesquelles le célèbre solo de trompette reste trop à l'arrière-plan. Globalement, cette nouvelle parution ne peut donc concurrencer la référence signée Haitink à Vienne, voire les belles versions de Harnoncourt à Amsterdam, ou Sinopoli à Dresde, ni même supplanter la gravure officielle plus tardive de Kubelik à Munich (Sony), plus équilibrée.

Hervorragend: Bruckner, 3.Symphonie, SO des BR, Rafael Kubelik, audite 92543....

Ta niezwykła płyta zasługuje na szczególną uwagę przede wszystkim przez...

Nicht selten wird bei der Restaurierung historischer Aufnahmen das...

Le label Audite nous a déjà donné la plupart des Symphonies de Mahler,...