Conflating recognisable pit-stops in Fischer-Dieskau's career with some rarities, this varied compilation is an imaginative celebration of his unique approach to sacred texts from Handel to Brahms. The Bach selection of arias contains both the rapt hovering and unforced characterisation of the famous 1958 St Matthew Passion under Richter ('Mache dich', though, without his recitative before. How could they?) and the often theatrical exaggeration of some of the 1970s cantata recordings. 'Achzen und erbarmlich' from No 13 is a case where Fischer-Dieskau makes up for a comparative lack of vocal depth through gestural overkill. This becomes clear when comparing the same work recorded under Forster (EMI). Another slight quibble would be that of the near 70 cantatas Richter recorded - of which Fischer-Dieskau is the prime bass representative - there are far better examples of his art than the duet in No 140 (I think immediately of Nos 104 and 115). Of the rarities we have a cantata by Stolzel which is referred to, by the artist, in the foreword as 'a last minute project organised alongside festival concerts'. It is beautifully sung, all the more admirable in that it is a pretty middle-of-the-road example by one of Bach's lesser contemporaries. It is, however, a debut on CD format and with such good mastering it will interest collectors.
The remaining tracks are representative of Fischer-Dieskau's inimitable way with church music, where spiritual luminosity and dramatic judgement are so rarely out of kilter with each other. 'Holde Gattin' from Haydn's Creation could hardly be called 'sacred' with all its references to 'the juice of the plump fruit' in the rapturous love duet but I suppose it is Adam and Eve singing, and Janowitz's Eve, although a touch brittle, contains its own magic. One of the most memorable items, in a curious way, is the aria from Handel's Belshazzar. Fischer-Dieskau's English is almost too deliberate and open-vowelled to be entirely intelligible, but the aria itself is trance-like with a memorably aristocratic purview of his territory; Hans Stadlmair confirms that he was one of the great unsung conducting accompanists of the period. With the suitably commanding intensity of the Brahms under a youthful Barenboim, this disparate but generous selection leaves the listener well rounded in the master's sacred art.
Jonathan Freeman-Attwood