HOTTER SINGS WINTERREISE

Description

Wrote critic Joseph Horowitz in The New York Times on December 12, 1999: "The most powerful Winterreise I know. . . an interior reading devoid of special pleading . . . Hotter . . . has the courage simply to sing what he feels. And what he feels-far more potently than when he re-recorded Winterreise with Gerald Moore in London in 1954-is an ineluctable fatigue of the spirit, remote from any madness or degradation."

CD-1061(1) HOTTER SINGS WINTERREISE. Franz Schubert: Winterreise, Op. 89, D 911. Hans Hotter, baritone, with Michael Raucheisen, piano; from DG 78s, recorded November 1942. A coproduction with Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (AAD) 75:50. UPC # 0-17685-10612-5.

This is the fourth volume in a series of coproductions with the German Radio Archive. The first three volumes featured historic recordings from 1932 to 1950, and were released for the first time in authorized performances taken from the best sources, carefully re-engineered, and presented with commentary from internationally recognized writers.

The first volume, released in April, was CD-1057(2) RICHARD STRAUSS CONDUCTS HIS TONE POEMS-PREVIOUSLY UNISSUED 1936 – 1942 BROADCAST PERFORMANCES.

The second volume, CD-1058(4), released in May, featured Wagner's GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG from the Bayreuth Festival of July 21 of 1942 starring Marta Fuchs as Brünnhilde, Set Svanholm as Siegfried, Egmont Koch as Gunther, and Friedrich Dalberg as Hagen, with Karl Elmendorff conducting.

The third volume, released in June, was CD-1060(2) CLAUDIO ARRAU IN GERMANY: PRE-WAR RECORDINGS FROM THE COLLECTION OF DEUTSCHES RUNDFUNKARCHIV, with works by Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Liszt.

Future volumes include hitherto unissued orchestral performances under Furtwängler, Krauss, Abendroth, Kabasta, Jochum, Schuricht, Knappertsbusch, and Celibidache, piano recitals by Gieseking, Arrau, and Kempff, and vocal performances featuring such outstanding artists of the past as Tiana Lemnitz, Michael Bohnen, Marcel Wittrisch, and Hans Hotter. Maggi Payne, internationally acclaimed sound engineer is in charge of the technical restoration of the series.