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May 2012

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau † 18 May 2012

It is no
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Foto: Archiv Orfeo International Music GmbHexaggeration to say that with the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau the world has lost one of its most multitalented artists and that we are all the poorer in consequence. That he set new standards as a singer, especially in the lieder repertory, does not need restating here, and yet this was really no more than a single facet of his ultimately inexhaustible artistry.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Foto: Archive Orfeo International Music GmbHIn the last five years alone he published books on Goethe, Brahms and Wilhelm Furtwängler, spanning a period of 150 years in German cultural history with a sovereign authority that would have done credit to the career of many a purely academic author. He was also successful as a conductor, his appearances with a whole series of world-class orchestras emphatically refuting the scepticism and prejudice that his decision to add this string to his bow may have occasioned in advance. Even in the case of such “sidelines” as teaching, painting and taking part in public readings, there was one quality in particular that was always to the fore: a lively and critical awareness of art that remained undimmed throughout the sixty or so years that Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was active as an artist. Never for a moment was his incorruptibility diminished. True, there were experiments that did not always work out, attempts to explore areas of the repertory that remained no more than tentative. And yet it is hard, if not impossible, to think of any other singer who performed such a wide-ranging and probing selection of lieder at the Salzburg Festival and who did so, moreover, on such a consistently high artistic level. And how many singers performing the role of Wolfram von Eschenbach on Bayreuth’s Green Hill could bear comparison with every other exponent of the part, whether past or present-day, while at the same time remaining open to the new in the form of contemporary stage works such as Olivier Messiaen’s monumental Saint François d’Assise? And how few other singers recognized as clearly as he did that in order to ensure a lengthy career natural gifts grounded in a solid technique and including a striking yet soft-grained timbre needed to be constantly offset and counterbalanced by an interpretative power that continued grow as he gained in artistic experience? The epithet “exceptional” has nowadays lost much of its significance, and yet it is more than justified in the case of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. His passing marks the end of an era. It was – and remains – a privilege for Orfeo to have worked with him on so many projects, projects that are barely imaginable without his active involvement. Rarely has a leave-taking been so difficult in so many different ways.

Discoraphy ORFEO International

Lied

Opera

Cantatas/concert arias

Christmas

D. Fischer-Dieskau conducting

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March 2012

Eugen Jochum † 26 March 1987

Eugen Jochum, who died twenty-five years ago on 26 March 1987, was one of the most important conductors of his generation.
Eugen Jochum
Foto: Reinhold MöllerAt a time when the legacy of great artists is not always treated with the respect that it deserves, an assessment that may sound like an empty cliché perhaps requires a brief explanation. A native of Babenhausen in the Allgäu, Jochum is assured of a place of honour in the post-war history of a city as closely associated with music as Munich thanks not least to his work as the first principal conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. He later filled a similar position with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, leaving his mark on two orchestras that remain at the very forefront of international music making. He was also one of that hand-picked group of orchestral conductors who helped to shape the early years of the post-war Bayreuth Festival, where he conducted Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin and Parsifal. He additionally conducted the final performances of Wieland Wagner’s Parsifal in 1973. But JochumÕs repertory was almost literally all-embracing, covering not only Wagner and Bruckner but also contemporary works and “classics” in the truest sense of the term. And he broached them all with equal success. His artistry is reflected in the Orfeo catalogue in recordings of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner and Verdi as well as Pfitzner and Hindemith.

C 045 832 A
C 272 921 B
C 205 891 B
C 273 922 I
C 195 892 I
C 270 921 B

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March 2012

Martha Mödl 100th Anniversary

Every tribute to Martha Mödl, who would have been one hundred years old on 22 March 2012, is like describing that untranslatable and constantly shifting concept of the monstre sacré.
Martha Mödl
Foto: Archive of the Bayreuther FestspieleShe was a highly individual and idiosyncratic singer, her vocal and histrionic abilities by no means uncontroversial but ultimately invariably compelling. No one who has heard her recordings as Isolde under Karajan in the first post-war Tristan und Isolde at the 1952 Bayreuth Festival or as Leonore under Karl Böhm in the performances of Fidelio that reopened the Vienna State Opera in 1955 will be able to resist the dazzling brilliance of her interpretation of these roles. There seems little doubt that the intensity of such performances in this hochdramatisch soprano repertory affected her voice and made it inevitable that she would soon change direction and focus on roles with a lower tessitura. But even in character parts she was no less successful than she had been earlier in her career, especially as Klytämnestra in Strauss’s Elektra, in which she often appeared alongside Astrid Varnay. Whatever rivalry there may have been between these two singers, they were always the closest of colleagues. Even later in her stage career, which ended only in the year of her death, 2001, Martha Mödl remained a potent presence in the role of the typical comic crone, notably under Wolfgang Sawallisch’s musical direction at the Bavarian State Opera, where she appeared as the Housekeeper in Strauss’s Die schweigsame Frau and as Zita in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, for example. And even in roles generally regarded as of secondary importance, this unique artist was always the focus of attention. For opera lovers all over the world, the centenary of her birth is an occasion to remember.

C 813 102 I 
C 661 041 B 
C 298 922 I 
C 603 033 D

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February 2012

50th † Bruno Walter

Bruno Walter,
Bruno Walter
Foto: Archive of the Salzburg Festivalwho died fifty years ago on 17 February 1962, belonged to a generation of conductors who regarded it as self-evident that they would not only conduct music but also compose it and perform in public as pianists.
C 669 051 B

C 818 101 B

C 430 961 B

C 562 021 BWalter worked for a time as Mahler’s assistant and spent his whole life championing his mentor’s works both in Europe and in America, where he was forced to flee in order to escape from National Socialist Germany. Following the war, however, he returned to many of the scenes of his former triumphs, notably Vienna and Salzburg – he had worked closely with the Vienna Philharmonic from an early date and frequently appeared at the Salzburg Festival during its early years. A number of these memorable performances are documented on the Orfeo label, including Mahler’s First Symphony and Schubert’s “Unfinished” with the Bavarian State Orchestra – among the works he premièred in Munich in his capacity as general music director of the Bavarian State Opera was Pfitzner’s Palestrina. A live performance from the Salzburg Festival captures Walter’s interpretation of another Mahler symphony, the Fourth, in a programme that also included Beethoven’s Egmont Overture – Beethoven was another of the composers who were central to Walter’s repertory. A second Salzburg concert features a live recording of Mozart’s Requiem set down late in Walter’s career. In 1955, finally, he officially reopened the rebuilt Vienna State Opera with a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It is a performance that ranks as one of the very special moments in the life of a conductor who, for all that he was marked by the 20th century, also had a lasting influence on the history of 20th-century music as a whole.

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January 2012

† Rita Gorr

The great Belgian mezzo-soprano Rita Gorr, who died only a few weeks before her eighty-sixth birthday, was one of those singers who force us to question traditional hierarchies on the operatic stage.
Rita Gorr
Foto: Archive of the Bayreuther FestspieleWith her full-toned, penetrating timbre, coupled with a superior command of the technical and dramatic demands of the roles in her repertory, Rita Gorr intimidated many a soprano colleague and even tenor and baritone heroes – but never, of course, with the aim of simply making an impression for the sake of it. She did so mostly in Romantic works – whether in the German, French or Italian repertory was a matter of no great consequence. No Samson could get the better of her Delilah, and as Amneris she knew that her rival Aida could never be certain of Radames’ favour. On the Orfeo label she may be heard as a ferocious Ortrud at the 1959 Bayreuth Festival alongside Ernest Blanc’s Telramund, Sándor Kónya as her nemesis Lohengrin and Elisabeth Grümmer’s no less ideal Elsa – perhaps the most homogenous Lohengrin cast in the history of the gramophone. Rita Gorr continued to pursue her career until after her eightieth birthday, not least as a sinister Countess in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, a powerful vocal and histrionic assumption of the part that was seen at the Vienna State Opera in 1999 as well as elsewhere.

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December 2011

Grace Bumbry 75th Anniversary

If Grace Bumbry, who celebrates her seventy-fifth birthday on 4 January 2012, is a legend in her own lifetime, this is due not least to her Bayreuth début in 1961, when she appeared as a “black Venus” in Wieland Wagner’s production of Tannhäuser.
Grace BumbryAnd yet her appearances in this part were hardly typical of her later career and repertory, for it is principally in Italian and French roles that the singer from St Louis, Missouri, has set standards that others have sought in vain to equal, not just in mezzo roles but in soprano roles, too. (She has sung Wagner’s Venus, for example, not only in the original “Dresden” version but also in the lower version that Wagner rewrote for Paris and Vienna.) Within three years of her sensational Bayreuth début she was already singing Verdi’s Lady Macbeth in Salzburg – as in Bayreuth, she appeared alongside Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau under the direction of Wolfgang Sawallisch. The live recording of the first night that has been released on Orfeo’s Festspieldokumente label indicates why Bumbry was hailed once again as the sensation of the evening. Her ability to strike the right balance between searing brilliance (but without any sense of acidulous sharpness) and expressive characterization comes close to that of a benchmark interpretation. During the years that followed, Grace Bumbry often had the opportunity to appear in Salzburg not only as a recitalist but also as Bizet’s Carmen under the direction of Herbert von Karajan. A CD of arias that she recorded with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra under Stefan Soltesz and that is available on the Orfeo label shows how flexible and stylistically varied was her choice of roles in the 1970s and 1980s: Verdi’s two Leonoras from La forza del destino and Il trovatore both feature here, as do roles from Classical and Romantic reform operas by Gluck and Cherubini, while the late Romantic and verismo periods are represented by arias from Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, Massenet’s Le Cid and Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, all of them indicating why Grace Bumbry deserves the accolade of primadonna assoluta in the most literal sense of the term: here is an outstanding singer for whom no limitation in terms of role or period is an obstacle that cannot be effortlessly surmounted.

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November 2011

...in der Karriere von Sena Jurinac, die am 22. November 2011 wenige Wochen nach ihrem 90. Geburtstag verstorben ist, gab es sicherlich riskante und kritische Momente.... [more...]

October 2011

We would be doing Emil Gilels an injustice by describing him as a late starter, and yet that is the impression that one occasionally forms because it was at a relatively late date that Gilels, having already made a name for himself in the Soviet Union, conquered the concert halls of the rest of the world. [more...]

September 2011

Exactly what it takes to make a prima donna has always divided opinion. But to rise to the ranks of a prima donna assoluta surely requires all manner of qualities in the eyes of operatic experts. [more...]

July 2011

Andris Nelsons is this year’s recipient of ECHO Klassik’s ‘Conductor of the Year’ Award, a honour bestowed on him for his Stravinsky recording with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. [more...]

July 2011

Not just for Orfeo but for others, too, Hans Werner Henze’s eighty-fifth birthday on 1 July 2011 was more than merely a cause for celebration. [more...]

May 2011

Aribert Reimann ist am 24. Mai 2011 in München für sein Lebenswerk mit dem Ernst-von-Siemens-Musikpreis geehrt worden. [more...]

May 2011

During the 1950s and 1960s, international opera houses looking for a hochdramatisch soprano capable of doing justice to the roles of Salome or Electra in Strauss's operas of the same name or to the part of the Dyer's Wife in the same composer's Die Frau ohne Schatten needed to look no further than Inge Borkh. [more...]

May 2011

Die Nachricht vom Tod Dieter Klöckers bedeutet einen herben Verlust für alle, die klassische Musik und speziell die Musikliteratur für Klarinette lieben. [more...]

April 2011

In an age when many internationally acclaimed performers limit themselves to a relatively restricted repertory, Dieter Klöcker – to whom we offer our warmest good wishes on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday – stands alone. [more...]

April 2011

With the death of the Welsh tenor Robert Tear on 29 March, the world has lost a great artist. In the German-speaking world he was known above all as an outstanding singing actor. [more...]

March 2011

In many ways the death of Yakov Kreizberg at the age of fifty-one marks the end of an era in the world of classical music. Only a few weeks ago he was praised for his excellent, far-reaching work with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo [more...]

February 2011

The news that Dame Margaret Price has died of heart failure in Cardigan is as unexpected as it is a shock. 2011 was to have been a year in which to honour this grandiose singer, who would have celebrated her 70th birthday on 13 April. [more...]

January 2011

There have already been many words of congratulation from others, but nor do we wish to miss the opportunity to celebrate Plácido Domingo’s 70th birthday too. [more...]

October 2010

Although the USA became his home, Dimitri Mitropoulos is in people’s minds today associated above all with a music-dramatic work that would have been unthinkable without the High Classical culture of Athens, the city of his birth. [more...]

October 2010

The name of Fritz Wunderlich has long since been the stuff of legend, and yet it is impossible not to recall that he might have still been alive today and that we would now be celebrating his eightieth birthday if he had not been snatched away by his tragically early death. [more...]

August 2010

Signing session with Andriss Nelsons. [more...]

July 2010

If there is a post-war singer who fully deserves the description “basso cantante” then it can only be Cesare Siepi. [more...]

July 2010

It was exactly eighty years ago, on 3 July 1930, that Carlos Kleiber first saw the light of the world in Berlin. Six years after his sudden death in 2004 his special standing among his fellow conductors continues to resonate. [more...]

May 2010

The price for great popularity in the arts can sometimes be high. Even the greatest successes in “serious” art can be diminished in the eyes of the public by supposedly “low-brow” appearances in the popular media. [more...]

May 2010

Giulietta Simionato died on 5 May 2010, exactly one week before her 100th birthday. She was perhaps the most versatile mezzo-soprano of her generation anywhere in the world. [more...]

August 2009

She was at the very top of the wish-list of intendants, conductors, directors and the public at all the big opera houses when it came to high dramatic soprano roles in the 1980s and ’90s. [more...]

July 2009

It has been claimed that in the age of film and television popularity and seriousness in classical music, especially in opera, are mutually exclusive. The German baritone Hermann Prey was living refutation of this claim. [more...]

July 2009

That a pronounced allegiance to a particular region does not have to stand in the way of an international career is well illustrated by the career of Brigitte Fassbaender. [more...]

November 2008

She was one of the truly great hochdramatisch sopranos of the early post-war period, even though her recordings unfortunately provide only an inadequate reflection of her Wagnerian repertory. As a result, Christel Goltz is remembered above all as an exceptionally vivid exponent of early 20th-century works. [more...]

August 2008

It has been some fifteen years since his last operatic performances on the rostrum of the Bavarian State Orchestra, but his hometown of Munich is not the only place to have fond memories of him. The person of whom we speak is the conductor, Wolfgang Sawallisch... [more...]

April 2008

It is almost inevitable that our picture of Joseph Keilberth is bound up with the sense of shock triggered by his sudden death following a heart attack during a performance of Tristan und Isolde at the Munich Nationaltheater on 20 July 1968. [more...]

April 2008

Whole conferences are being held to mark the centenary of Herbert von Karajan’s birth, while existing biographies and discographies, with their critical and uncritical approaches, are compared and relativized, allowing new standpoints to emerge. [more...]

March 2008

Franz Crass, to whom we extend our very best wishes on the occasion of his eightieth birthday on 9 March 2008, was an exception among German basses of the post-war period. [more...]

February 2008

ORFEO 2 CD C 678 062 H

A co-production with West German Radio, Orfeo’s recording of Antonín Dvorák’s Král a uhlír (King and Charcoal Burner) has received an award for the best operatic recording at this year’s Midem Classical Music Awards. [more...]

January 2008

ORFEO 2 CD C 438 982 H

Although Max Bruch first saw the light of day in Cologne on the Feast of the Epiphany 170 years ago, he remains less familiar to today’s audiences as a “religious” composer than for his Violin Concerto in G minor, a piece that is in the repertory of all the great violinists. [more...]

August 2007

ORFEO 2 CD C 438 982 H

In Mozart in particular she was admired above all for the clarity of her timbre and her consistently lean-toned intonation that was free of all impurities. But it would be wrong to forget that Gundula Janowitz’s needle-sharp accuracy never impeded her emotional and dramatic involvement in a role. [more...]

June 2007

ORFEO 1 CD C 686 061 A

Arabella Steinbacher has been awarded the ECHO Classical Music Award as Young Artist of the Year in the 2007 instrumental category for her CD Violino Latino (C 686 061 A). [more...]

March 2007

ORFEO 1 CD C 138 851 A

It says much for our sense of continuity in the history of recorded sound that – notwithstanding all attempts to achieve authenticity and return to an elusive Urtext – it is not only the pioneering feats of the proponents of period performing practice that are reissued. [more...]

January 2007

ORFEO 1 CD C 138 851 A

Grace Bumbry was still in her mid-twenties when she caused a sensation at the 1961 and 1962 Bayreuth Festivals as a “black Venus” in a performance notable above all for its dazzling vocalism and brilliant acting. [more...]

January 2007

ORFEO 1 CD C 138 851 A

Writing to his father during preparations for the first performance of Idomeneo in Munich in the winter of 1780/81, Mozart described the difficulties that he had encountered in trying to create a proper sense of balance between his protagonist’s coloratura agility and an expressivity that would be effective onstage. [more...]

October 2006

Although it is now twenty-four years since Sena Jurinac – an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera – bade farewell to the stage, memories of her great performances remain as fresh as ever. [more...]

September 2006

The life and career of Astrid Varnay are the subject of both legend and anecdote. She was Bayreuth’s first post-war Brünnhilde, continuing to appear in the part, alongside various colleagues, for well over a decade. [more...]

August 2006

Some operatic roles can be approached in very different ways, even though the vocal difficulties associated with them remain the same. [more...]

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