Zum Liederabend am 26. Oktober 1971 in London


Daily Telegraph, 28. Oktober 1971  

Ideal performance by Fischer-Dieskau

Faultless unity of style and an almost uncanny ability to identify himself with the mood and situation of each song were perhaps the most striking features of Fischer-Dieskau’s Schumann recital at the Festival Hall.

This identification showed itself not only in modifications of tone-colour and the shaping of phrases, but also in stance and facial expression.

No doubt this is a result of the displays of emotion that operatic experience has brought to his art as a lieder singer.

In "Mein Wagen rollet langsam," for instance, the shadowy apparitions of Heine’s poem were brought vividly before the listener by a composite art in which voice and piano were subtly seconded by dramatic tension expressed through the singer’s whole body.

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At the other extreme, he could create the effect of perfect stillness – uncanny in "Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen" and dreamlike in "Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen" – by sustaining through a whole song a single, hardly modified dynamic level.

Nothing was more impressive than the absolute stillness and clarity of his pianissimo recitative in "Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet," or the astonished-sounding Ritardando with which he finished the sequel "Allnächtlich im Traume." His whole treatment of the "Dichterliebe" transposed the work from the plane of everyday reality to the dream-world which Heine’s poems and Schumann’s music miraculously unite to create.

Martin Cooper

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