Editorial

Editorial - June 2005: Fischer-Dieskau, de los Angeles

On 28 May 2005 one of the greatest musicians of all time celebrated his eightieth birthday. Numerous heartfelt words of congratulations to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau have already been penned and CD companies have enthusiastically issued compilations from their back catalogues in commemoration of the event. And what an impressive rich seam there is to mine! Surely no artist has left such an extensive and varied discography: not content with recording all the usual mainstream repertoire Fischer-Dieskau has actively sought out and recorded works of other rather less well known composers from the early Baroque to the contemporary.

When I was young my Austrian grandmother used to give me an opera set each Christmas. The first was Fricsay's matchless Entführung and this was followed by his Figaro. I must have heard Fischer-Dieskau's voice for the first time before receiving this set, for I was generously offered the choice between having Fischer-Dieskau's Count and Schwarzkopf's Countess and (with absolutely no disrespect to Madame Schwarzkopf) I immediately opted for Fischer-Dieskau. Shortly after playing Figaro I wrote to my new hero c/o Deutsche Grammophon. I've no idea if Fischer-Dieskau ever received this letter (and in any case he would have had great difficulty reading my schoolboy scrawl) but I did receive a publicity photo which I have treasured ever since.

I had to wait almost a decade before seeing him in person; as a gangly fifteen year-old I accompanied my mother to the Salzburg and Munich Festivals in 1971. The journey to Munich was exciting yet easy enough on paper: train from Dorset to London, quick ride across the metropolis to catch the boat train to Harwich, overnight to Holland and the luxury Rheingold Express to Munich, where we were to be met by a friend of my uncle's who would see us to our hotel in time to change before seeing Salome in the evening. Exciting it was, easy it was not. The train was derailed when it ran into a herd of cows outside Salisbury and we missed our boat train. However British Rail (bless them!) were advised of our plight and laid on a taxi to drive us at breakneck speed to Harwich. We arrived with one other passenger in Harwich in time to see two boats - one had already pulled out and the other was about to do so. After some persuasion the crew of the second ship allowed us to board and we all three discovered that we were on the wrong boat! But by chance it too was going to the Hoek of Holland and we managed to find our seats on the Rheingold Express the next morning.

After this excitement things ran smoothly and we were duly met by my uncle's friend at Munich station. However to our horror the centre of Munich was cordoned off by police and newspaper stands bore the ominous headlines 'Geisel ist tot' (hostage is dead). We had arrived in the middle of the first Baader-Meinhof incident. Thankfully my uncle's friend was a local VIP and he got us through the cordon and to the hotel which was just a short distance from the Nationaltheater.

That evening I sat through the most electrifying performance of Salome. In true festival fashion it featured an all-star cast (Rysanek, Varnay, Stolze, Fischer-Dieskau in the main parts and among the lesser roles luminaries such as Wieslaw Ochman and Kurt Böhme, with Leitner in the pit). Words cannot describe the thrill as I heard and saw Fischer-Dieskau perform for the first time.

I next saw Fischer-Dieskau in Salzburg and if the Salome cast was of festival standard then the line-up for Cosi fan tutte was for the truly blessed: Janowitz, Fassbänder, Grist, Schreier, Prey, Fischer-Dieskau and with Böhm conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. This cast, with Panerai instead of F-D, has been available for many years on DGG and has been widely admired; however critics have seemed more intent at drawing attention to the cuts in the score and carping at the stage noises picked up by the microphones than at marvelling at the feast of superlative Mozartian singing these evenings produced. In the past thirty years such stellar gatherings can be counted on the fingers of one hand and the chances of experiencing the like again must be less than winning the lottery. So thank you and many happy returns, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, for two truly unforgettable evenings at the opera and for countless hours of blissful listening.

Sadly I came to Lieder rather later than opera (to my eternal shame I was actually disappointed one Christmas to be given F-D's 1960s HMV Die schöne Müllerin rather than the hoped-for operatic recital; it is now one of my most frequently played recordings) and I never saw the great man on the concert platform. I have to content myself with his recordings, two of which are on offer this month in the catalogue: the matchless mono Winterreise and a DGG recording of Schumann's Heine settings. There is also the Traviata he recorded for Decca and his Wotan in Karajan's Rheingold. There's plenty more Fischer-Dieskau here still to be cleaned and listened to, so if you have any special requests please send your wants to me via the enquiries@kernowclassics.co.uk page and I'll see what I can come up with!

There's a rare feast of violin playing on sale in the new list. Martzy's highly sought-after second volume of unaccompanied Bach tops the list and I have also selected two from my Gioconda de Vito collection for inclusion this month (the Brahms Double and the Mendelssohn concerto). There are also new listings from Heifetz, Ricci and Szeryng. Collectors of pianists might also find several items of interest in the June list: among the highlights are Katchen's Liszt concertos, a fascinating and highly extrovert original Tchaikovsky Second Concerto on HMV/Melodiya (whatever happened to Igor Zhukov?) and one of my all-time favourites, Geza Anda's Tchaik First coupled with a delightful Coppélia- Paraphrase encore.

If your taste is for legendary orchestral recordings then you will surely not be disappointed with the recordings with Ansermet, Kempe and Klemperer being added this month. Whilst these may in some cases be familiar items for the established collector there is a new and ever-growing public ready to snap these up in their original format. Other orchestral delights include a couple of recordings by Constantin Silvestri. Whereas his recordings with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra have been readily accessible over the years, those recorded outside Britain are worthy of rediscovery. Among the latter is the Russian music record on HMV and a sparkling and characterful 10" LP of his compatriot Enesco's Romanian Rhapsodies.

Returning to vocal music I should like to offer a belated tribute to the much loved Victoria de los Angeles in the shape of two LPs: one of songs (which includes one song where she accompanies herself on the guitar) and the other of arias taken from her complete opera recordings. For collectors of the unusual there is the chance to purchase two rare opera sets: Schubert's Die Freunde von Salamanka and Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac. By the time you read this Domingo will already have appeared in the latter opera, but very few people outside of those lucky enough to be there will have any idea of what Alfano's original music is like. Here then is an almost unique chance to get to know this often rewarding work (only a handful of these must have been sold in the UK).

A commonly expressed irritation with CDs is the lack of space given to sleeve notes. Some seem to feel they can get by altogether without explanatory notes and one often feels that powerful magnifying glasses should be supplied to read what is there. The labels will counter by saying that costs of printing and packaging have risen sharply over the years and that the very size of the product prohibits vast quantities of notes. Storage was however always a problem for 78s and LPs (something I am keenly aware of at the moment surrounded as I am by some five thousand LPs and what seems to be almost as many 78s!) and no one can deny the advantage CDs have in this department. But I do miss the care that clearly went into many of the booklets accompanying LP boxed sets with their erudite articles accompanied by glossy photos. What do other listeners think?