Schubert

Winterreise

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau bar Alfred Brendel pf Video director Klaus Lindemann TDK ® 02 DVWW-COWINT (73' • NTSC • 4:3 • PCM stereo • 0) Mozart• Schubert Schubert Die schöne Mullerina Aflim by Bruno Monsaingeon

The Mastersinger - Lesson ilib: Mozart Le nozze di Figaro - Hai gii vinta la causal; Vedrô mentr'io sospiro

A film by Bruno Monsaingeon )ietrich Fischer-Dieskau bar with P Matthias Retmer bar aCSOPh Eschenbach, bEc Schneider pfi EMI Classic Archive W DVB3101949 (92' • 4:3 • PCM stereo • 0) 'The Art of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau'

Includes excerpts from Arabella, Don Giovanni, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Le nozze di Figaro, Lear and 11 tabarro, and Lieder by Beethoven, Mahler, Schubert, Schumann and R Strauss

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau bass-bar with various artists

DG ® ® W 073 4050GH2 (3h 22' • NTSC • 4:3 • PCM stereo and mono . 0) A Fischer-Dieskau overview boasting a definitive Winterreise However many versions of Fischer-Dieskau singing Winterreise you may own, this one -televised in Berlin in 1979— is definitive. When performed with the vocal and pianistic mastery, emotional concentration and technical virtuosity shown here it becomes not only a unique experience but one to treasure for a lifetime. The pair recorded it for CD seven years later but by then the baritone's voice was on the wane. Here he is quite mesmerising and, as the rehearsal bonus reveals, one artist's insight enhances that of the other until they reach a true symbiosis.

As it happens, FischerDieskau recorded the work the same year (DG, 6/00 -nla) with Barenboim, the CD-only version that I have come to admire most. On each occasion the intellectual control and Schubertian understanding of his partner seems to inspire the singer to dig ever deeper into the cycle's inner meaning. On DVD, the range of the performance, given without an audience, is astonishing in every way, the shattering experience seen and felt in his body language - a permanent reminder of the pair's interpretative genius in Schubert. Discover its special qualities for yourself.

The account of Die schone Mullerin is not quite in the same class. The singer refrained from performing it from 1971, when he recorded it with Gerald Moore, until 1991, when he at last returned to it at the Feldkirch Schubertiade (TDK, 7/05). His interpretation was very much of the words as a narrative. The following April he sang it, possibly for the last time, in Berlin with F.schenbach, the reading we have here. The approach is basically the same but the sense of rediscovery so apparent in the earlier version is less evident. The command of all aspects of the cycle is still there but one becomes conscious of the effort it is taking from a 67-year-old singer. A more serious drawback is Eschenbach's playing: by comparison with Schiff he is uninspiring.

The new DG offering partly comprises extracts from the baritone's operatic repertory, though one is left wondering if an operatic ignoramus made the choice as so many key moments are missing. For instance we just get to the climax of the Arabella/Mandryka duet when the sound and vision fade. The second of the two D\TDs is in the main taken from a Lieder recital recorded for television in 1974. There are some memorable accounts of popular songs plus much familiar Schubert, Schumann and Richard Strauss, but on this early occasion before the cameras Fischer-Dieskau seems a shade stiff, and Sawallisch proves a disappointingly unimaginative partner. The set closes with the singer's intense interpretation of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. As a whole these issues box the compass of the artist's huge repertory, documenting a long life spent in music's service.

Alan Blyth