Still Und Lieblich

Some people believe that music which has fallen into oblivion is simply not good enough to survive the passing of time. In some cases that may be true, but as many music of the 17th and 18th centuries was written for one performance at a specific occasion it is rather surprising that so much material has been preserved. When music is rediscovered in libraries or archives it often turns out to be of surprising quality, even if the composers are totally unknown to us. The disc to be reviewed here is another example of music which fully deserves to be brought to our attention.

Stories about Wunderlich's meteoric rise to success, his incredibly heavy workload or his seemingly effortless acquisition of new repertoire have been told again and again - sometimes painting an idealized and sometimes a distorted picture of the artist. The nine installments of the SWR retrospective that have been released by SWR CLASSIC to this day feature Fritz Wunderlich as a singer of songs, (an unequalled) Mozart tenor, a brilliant interpreter of the greatest tenor hits, a fascinating singer of operettas and as a tasteful interpreter of light music, to name but a few of the genres that made up his repertoire.

Deutsche Grammophon presents the second and final volume of Ferenc Fricsay’s complete recordings for the label. Vol. 2 gathers the totality of Fricsay’s œuvre with the human voice, covering all of his opera, orchestral song and choral recordings on 37 CDs.

Georg Böhm is one of those German Protestant composers who has had the misfortune to have his name inextricably linked with that of J. S. Bach. In the case of Böhm, the link with Bach is especially potent, since there is the liklihood that the two became acquainted during the period Bach attended the Michaelisschule in Lüneburg (1700?c. 1703). More importantly, Böhm has long been acknowledged as an influence on Bach?s organ and keyboard music.

The ultimate collection of the complete music of J.S. Bach. Having all of Bach's music at my fingertips is a dream come true. This astonishing collection of music is a historic event. Teldec has compiled an excellent collection of all the works of J.S. Bach, from well-known to the obscure, performed by a wide variety of highly respected musicians. There are many, many treasures included in this collection, for example: the cello suites performed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt now on cd for the first time. And the 4-cd set of chorales is stunning. Teldec's mammoth Bach 2000 box set represents a kind of culmination of that original attempt to come to terms with Johann Sebastian Bach's unparalleled legacy.

In the 1940s and early 1950s, Irmgard Seefried was a paragon among German lyric sopranos, her voice fresh and crystalline, her stage presence vital and attractive. Although she was an intelligent and well-prepared artist, the impression she made was one of considerable spontaneity. Her Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte were very different creations, the first piquant and cunning, the latter direct and innocent, though never the pallid personality others have imposed upon her. Her Composer in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos was a defining interpretation, ardently sung and passionately acted.

Marking the 80th birthday of Gundula Janowitz in August 2017, this box set celebrates her clear and honest soprano voice through a selection of her opera, oratorio and Lieder recordings. The favourite lyric soprano of Herbert von Karajan, Janowitz set the standard for sopranos with her legendary recordings of Mozart and R. Strauss which are still unsurpassed in the catalogue.

"Between 1980 and his death in 1989, Herbert von Karajan recorded the incredible amount of 78 CDs worth of orchestral and choral music for DGG. In the final decade of his creative life, he made quintessential recordings of major works he had not recorded before: Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 “The Inextinguishable” and Saint-Saëns’ “Organ” Symphony. Among the highpoints of Karajan’s late years is the major part of his collaboration with Anne-Sophie Mutter, the “wunderkind” Karajan discovered in the late 1970s and mentored throughout the 1980s.