Landmark Schöne Müllerin performances on record

[Mandryka]

Two parlando performances.

First, Patzak with Raucheisen

And Egmond/Crawford




I find  Patzak  makes a powerful impression expressively, there are these kind of storms which come from nowhere!   Egmond has a nice voice. Both a bit quirky, I'd say Patzak is a landmark in some sense. 

[SurprisedByBeauty]

An old discussion of landmark recordings here

http://operacritiques.free.fr/css/index.php?2014/04/15/2451-franz-

@SurprisedByBeauty  - can we have a new discography please. Chop-chop.

Oh boy! That's a tall order!
 
Can I placate you with a Twitter-thread on all the recordings of Die Winterreise that Fischer-Dieskau ever made?

https://twitter.com/ClassicalCritic/status/1685182786217418752

I have a few new discographies under way, though... but top of the list is an overhaul of the Bach Organ Cycle Survey.

[SimonNZ]

Wunderlich's DG set is deservedly a classic, but I remember back when I played this music a lot, and back when I had a huge vinyl collection, that I rated his Nonesuch recording even higher.



Haven't played it in over a decade, though. (well, I haven't played it since all my vinyl got stolen, and I've never encountered that recording on cd).

[Mandryka]

Astonishing rendition from Fassbaender and Reimann - tough, sour, harsh, brutal almost. Lyrical but spiky, angular. This is one nasty vengeful lover. Some would say she's taken the music completely the wrong way I guess.

[Mandryka]

Wanna hear Otello or Siegfried sing Schöne Müllerin? Francisco Araiza's your answer. The DG engineers have not done him any favours though - the timbre is lean and the it's sometimes terribly in your face, it's as if he's there in your living room, singing 2 meters away - full throttle, the volume of a tenor on the stage at Covent Garden. A far cry from his beautiful Winterreise. 


But it's a flexible colourful voice and a dramatic interpretation, nuanced,  sensitive to the poetry. If  he had been more sympathetically recorded it would be top tier.

[Mandryka]

This is a landmark because, I think, it's the longest Müllerin on record. Michel Schade is a lyric tenor with quite a pure timbre - and here he inflects the music quite dramatically. Buchbinder inflects the piano part quite dramatically too. This is Schade's second Mullerin recording, possibly Buchbinder's second too. There's something a bit self conscious about it all maybe, maybe I've lost my innocence, my open mind. It defo deserves a hearing.

[Mandryka]

Oh boy! That's a tall order!
 
Can I placate you with a Twitter-thread on all the recordings of Die Winterreise that Fischer-Dieskau ever made?

https://twitter.com/ClassicalCritic/status/1685182786217418752

I have a few new discographies under way, though... but top of the list is an overhaul of the Bach Organ Cycle Survey.

Here, you've lost the commission. He who snoozes loses.


https://dieschoenemuellerin.online/

[Mandryka]

Wanna hear Otello or Siegfried sing Schöne Müllerin? Francisco Araiza's your answer. The DG engineers have not done him any favours though - the timbre is lean and the it's sometimes terribly in your face, it's as if he's there in your living room, singing 2 meters away - full throttle, the volume of a tenor on the stage at Covent Garden. A far cry from his beautiful Winterreise. 


But it's a flexible colourful voice and a dramatic interpretation, nuanced,  sensitive to the poetry. If  he had been more sympathetically recorded it would be top tier.

This is better I think, a Tokyo concert in 1986. The sound is distant though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrG6Iz0yZRE&list=PLCBD203B12D7747E4

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Here, you've lost the commission. He who snoozes loses.


https://dieschoenemuellerin.online/

Yes, that's pretty darn impressive.

[Mandryka]

Andreas Schmidt has recorded Müllerin twice, first on Hänssler and then on DG - same for Winterreise. For DG the voice is deeper, and I would say that the interpretations - both Winterreise and Müllerin - are full of sensitivity. I just find what he does almost devistatingly expressive, moving, not for a minute boring or pretentious. Top tier, for both cycles. To be honest, I'm so impressed by his DG recordings that I may not be doing justice to the earlier ones.

[Mandryka]

This is such a fabulous performance because it's so attractive vocally - the pleasure comes from Hans Peter Blochwitz's colourful, flexible voice and his feeling for lyricism and the drama. The result is natural: it feels right, unpretentious and  obliterates the memory of others. The word I want to use for Blochwitz's art is "pure" - but I'm not sure why. Top T Müllerin objectively, if at the end of the day for me it's a bit too extrovert, too operatic. Gaben's pretty good too.

[Mandryka]

Roman Trekel/Oliver Pohl - Dark, text-aware, interesting and engaged and engaging.

[Mandryka]

It's just impossible not to like this - he's got such a flexible youthful voice and Dähler's piano playing is also flexible and youthful. Not the deepest psychologically or anything like that, but just an enjoyable thing to hear - if it were a concert you'd be well happy, bear happy, to have bothered to go. 

There's an earlier one with Bonneau which I'll check later.

What does Dähler have an ä and Hæfliger have an æ? I thought ä = æ

[Jo498]

æ is not a common letter in German, might be different in Switzerland (but I doubt it, it exist historically and in some fonts but lexically it is the same as ä as you said).
However, in names it can simply be that the official spelling of the ä-Sound ist "ae" (separate letters). The official spelling of Haefliger seems with "ae" and apparently the typesetter liked the fused letters for capital letters.
It's "Haefliger" on the Winterreise cover. And Dähler would only be spelled Daehler if the font/typewriter didn't have the umlaut. (I can tell some tales as someone who needed an ID in a US state as a student with a German last name that eventually was spelled in 3 different ways on different documents...)

There is a 3rd recording from ca. 1970 (CBS/Sony) with Werba (the only one I have), also good in a rather straightforward way.