Winterreise : Fischer-Dieskau, Billing (1948)

Audite Edition Fischer-Dieskau Vol. V

F. Schubert: Die Winterreise (1948)
Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich (baritone) | Billing, Klaus (piano)

Dietrich-Fischer Dieskau recorded Franz Schubert’s Die Winterreise around thirty times: on disc and for the radio which provided an important forum for the singer after the war. His “apprentice piece” was the very first recording of the cycle for the RIAS – a youthful, immediate and almost operatic interpretation of Wilhelm Müller’s poems ranging between world-weariness and romantic irony.
He managed this despite the difficult conditions in January 1948 surrounding the recording with the pianist Klaus Billing. The fluctuating currents of post-war Berlin affected the speed of the tape and, in addition to that, more than half of the cycle had to be re-recorded by the exhausted singer after technical problems became apparent. Once the completed recording was broadcast again and again, everyone in the East and the West knew that the Lied culture had not died but was still to flourish through Fischer-Dieskau. This careful digital re-mastering of the original tape furnishes the historical recording, despite its technical faults, with a previously unheard brilliance and immediacy.

There is a “Producer’s Comment” from producer Ludger Böckenhoff about this production available at www.audite.de/sc.php?cd=95597

The production is part of our series „Legendary Recordings“ and bears the quality feature „1st Master Release“. This term stands for the excellent quality of archival productions at audite. For all historical publications at audite are based, without exception, on the original tapes from broadcasting archives. In general these are the original analogue tapes, which attain an astonishingly high quality, even measured by today‘s standards, with their tape speed of up to 76 cm/sec. The remastering – professionally competent and sensitively applied – also uncovers previously hidden details of the interpretations. Thus, a sound of superior quality results. CD publications based on private recordings from broadcasts cannot be compared with these.

Franz Schubert: Winterreise

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone
Klaus Billing, piano

Monaural Recording: 19/01/1948, Berlin