Track Listing

1. Book I, Gute Nacht ("Fremd bin ich eingezogen")
2. Book I, Die Wetterfahne ("Der Wind spielt mit der Wetterfane")
3. Book I, Nicht zu langsam ("Gefror'ne Tropfen fallen")
4. Book I, Erstarrung ("Ich such' im Schnee vergebens")
5. Book I, Der Lindenbaum ("Am Brunnen vor dem Tore")
6. Book I, Wasserflut ("Manche Thran' aus meinen Augen")
7. Book I, Auf Dem Flusse ("Der du so lustig rauschtest")
8. Book I, Ruckblick ("Es brennt mir unter beiden Sohlen")
9. Book I, Irrlicht ("In die tiefsten Felsengrunde")
10. Book I, Rast ("Mun merk' ich erst, wie mud' ich bin")
11. Book I, Fruhlingstraum ("Ich traumte von bunten Blumen")
12. Book I, Einsamkeit ("Wie eine trube Wolke")
13. Book II, Die Post ("Von der Strasse her ein Posthorn klingt")
14. Book II, Der Greise Kopf ("Der Reif hat einen weissen Schein")
15. Book II, Die Krahe ("Eine Drahe war mit mir")
16. Book II, Letzte Hoffnung ("Hie und da ist an den Baumen")
17. Book II, Im Dorfe ("Es bellen die Hunde, es rasseln die Ketten")
18. Book II, Der Strumische Morgen ("Wie hat der Sturm zerrissen")
19. Book II, Tauschung ("Ein Licht tanzt freundlich vor mir her")
20. Book II, Der Wegweiser ("Was vermeid' ich denn die Wege")
21. Book II, Das Wirtshaus ("Auf einen Totenacker")
22. Book II, Mut ("Fliegt der Schnee mir in's Cesicht")
23. Book II, Die Nebensonnen ("Drei Sonnen sah ich am Himmel steh'n")
24. Book II, Der Leiermann ("Druben hinterm Dorfe steht ein Leitermann")

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33065 in Music
• Released on: 1996-02-13
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com essential recording
Any great concert singer is likely to have a lifelong obsession with Schubert's greatest song cycle, which tracks the winter journey of a jilted lover wandering into the snow finding ever-greater depths of alienation. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau seemed to record the piece every 10 years or so, but this 1966 outing is said to be his favorite, and it's easy to understand why. All of his customary intelligence is in full evidence, but the voice is particularly resplendent. While this carries an obvious sensual appeal--and every two minutes or so he does something that takes your breath away--the voice also illuminates his overall interpretive concepts with a clarity that can be achieved perhaps only by a voice in its absolute prime. Particularly gratifying is his emotional directness; later performances could be so refined, so worked over that the emotionalism (such an important part of this piece) seemed more remembered than felt. --David Patrick Stearns

Customer Reviews

So heart-rending, it's almost unbelievable. Superb. Supreme.
If you are going to purchase a Winterreise recording, let me assure you that having listened to so many, it has to be either this one, or the recording of Fischer-Dieskau, also in 1962, accompanied by Moore. Both pianists - Moore and Demus - work beautifully for Fischer-Dieskau. I might perhaps recommend Moore over Demus, but that is, of course, just my preference, and it is Fischer-Dieskau's performance we're talking about here.

First off, one needs to know a little German, or at least follow the translation well, in order to appreciate these Lieder. Fischer-Dieskau brings such a depth of emotion into the music that the lyrics must be followed by the listener, or else much is lost. Vocal expression - emotions expressed in individual words - is more important in "Wintereise" than in many other German Lieder.

This "Winterreise" is the most, repeat, the most beautiful rendition of ANY of Schubert's Lieder that I have heard. Someone once reviewed Fisher-Dieskau's 1960s Winterreise saying "it makes you feel like slashing your wrists".

True! "Winterreise" is, as Schubert said, morose and devoid of hope; Fischer-Dieskau carries the mood and emotion to the extreme limits, and what we get is such a heart-rending performance, it's almost unbearable. It's also almost unbelievable that a human voice can carry so much emotion.

Fischer-Dieskau's voice in this recording is at its best. It is totally spontaneous; it is from the depths of a despondent heart - and yet it is perfect. So perfect, in fact, that it seems that not even a syllable could have been improved!

The horror of the waking from the dream - "Es shrieen die Raben vom Dach!"; the resigned yet infinitely pining tone in "wann halt ich mein Liebchen in Arm?"; and most of all, the soul-shaking tremor in the words "Ob wohl auch so reisend schwillt?" -- these stick in the heart. If any one recording opens the ear to Schubert's infinite world of painful beauty, this is the one.

One could go on and on about this recording, but to cut a long story short, if you remain unmoved by Fisher-Dieskau's "Winterreise" there is probably very little in classical/romantic music that will ever move you. This is the master-composer at his finest, the human voice at its finest, and music at its finest.

To sum up, this is some of the best of Schubert's music on CD you will ever procure. The sound is legendary DG.

Heavenly.
Fischer-Dieskau is absolutely the best interpreter of Schubert's lieder. He has the most beautiful baritone I've ever heard, so natural and smooth. And the songs themselves are gorgeous. Fischer-Dieskau, it seems, was born to perform Schubert's work like no one else. A superb recording.

"The Language of poets and thinkers"
My high school German teacher -- one of them -- called German "die Sprache Dichtern und Denker" -- and I hope my faulty grammar at least paraphrases what he meant. This album brought his words back to me, to which I would add 'singers of eternally beautiful songs.' The combination of lyric beauty and dramatic power is unmatched here. Fischer-Dieskau has recorded this cycle several times. It is hard to ignore his collaborations with Gerald Moore, but this version from the mid-sixties finds a supurb partner in Jorg Demus.

Perhaps the German Lieder tradition of setting fine verse to music reached it's peak in Schubert's setting of Wilhelm Muellers poems. This recording makes a convincing argument in favor of such a view. The cycle seems a reflection on mortality and the ultimate solitude of the individual; the final song, "Der Leiermann," is a heartbreaking image of despair made bearable through the sheer beauty of Fischer-Dieskau's voice.