SCHUBERT: Song Cycles • Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

FRANZ SCHUBERT:
Lieder Vol. 3
Die schöne Müllerin · Winterreise · Schwanengesang
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau · Gerald Moore
Deutsche Grammophon | 3 CDs| Int. Release 01 Oct. 1992
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 Amazon.co.uk Review

The third volume of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's performances of Schubert Lieder include three cycles: Die Schöne Müllerin, Winterreise and Schwanengesang. Among the highlights are the despairing "Die Nebensonnen", the tender resignation of "Der Müller und der Bach" and the heartrending "Erstarrung". Gerald Moore's piano provides a rippling, unobtrusive canvas for the singer's artistry and Fischer-Dieskau's intimacy with the music creates an authoritative reading of Schubert's spiritual self-portrait. 

--Joshua Cody

For most lieder aficionados two names are indelibly associated with Winterreise: Hotter and Fischer-Dieskau. The latter made at least eight studio recordings of the cycle. My personal favourite is his DG recording with Gerald Moore.
-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International

Fischer-Dieskau and Moore were a dream partnership, both at the height of their powers when these recordings were made... All other considerations pale compared to the performances here, which are superb. Fischer-Dieskau is still fresh and spontaneous, confidently revelling in the pleasure he gets from the sheer physical experience of singing music. It’s infectious. Indeed, he’s remarkably uninhibited, his characterisations more adventurous and unmannered than they would become later. Moore, too, is wonderfully agile, working with the singer’s voice, each note confident and deft.At times, the voice is so mellifluous, that even after all these years of listening, I could barely suppress tears of joy.
-- Anne Ozorio, MusicWeb International [reviewing the box set, DG 000507702]

Fischer-Dieskau's performance of Die schöne Müllerin with Gerald Moore has gone through a good many versions and formats by now, starting with a sixteen-side 78 rpm set (HMV DB21388-95, 2/52) and now emerging from the third volume of their mammoth Schubert enterprise as a separate reissue. It seems to me that in this latest performance, Fischer-Dieskau has recaptured some of the freshness which marked his earliest encounters with the cycle, and which at one stage was, if never wholly lost, at any rate touched with a certain self-consciousness. If that kind of innocence must fade with interpretative experience, so it can only be recaptured by the truly mature artist; for just as it is often the very young or the very old who give the most moving Mozart performances, so there is something in Schubert that must be found and then only after a long journey rediscovered by the greatest of his interpreters. Fischer-Dieskau's art has been entering a new phase, in the natural processes of the change in his voice with time, of his own maturing, and not least of his constant re-exploration of these songs. For Gerald Moore, as he writes movingly in his recent book The Schubert Song-Cycles, Schubert cannot be left alone: he grows fresher, not staler, with time. Mr Moore's touch is as sure as ever, his imagery as true and unforced, his grasp of the songs in all their difficult simplicity perhaps still more perceptive. There will always be something to treasure in these two artists' first LP of the Schöne Müllerin (HMV mono ALP 1036-7, 4/53); but I would not want to be without this one, either.
-- Gramophone [8/1975]
reviewing the original LP release, DG 2530 544

Fischer-Dieskau's reading of (...) the Heine pieces in the cycle [Schwanengesang], adumbrate his vivid characterization: wordpictures and portraits indeed.
-- Gramophone [9/1985]

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TO ME !!!