There are two attitudes to Loewe here, and two styles of performing him. In the notes accompanying his recital, Fischer-Dieskau awards only faint praise to Loewe's ballads, feeling that their popularity has deprived his true Lieder of their due recognition; he accordingly concentrates on the shorter lyrics, including only two narrative ballads. Hermann, on the other hand, devotes himself wholly to ballads, indeed to the very difficult (for the performer) sub-genre of the ballad-cycle: the 25-minute Kaiser Karl V consists of just four linked songs, Gregor auf dem Stein of five.
Fischer-Dieskau, as you would expect of him by now, is minutely responsive to words and their expressive colouring; over-responsive at times, you might well feel, though to be sure the intensely dramatic nature of many of the texts seems at times to justify his almost theatrical manner. There is some strain at the top of his voice these days, a tendency to bark on exposed high phrases and a hint of shortness of breath here and there, but he is still a marvellous vocal technician, even with reduced resources: listen to the difficult but beautifully managed quiet rising scales in Das dunkle Auge, for example, or his elegant negotiation of the rhythmically tricky vocal line in Der Asra. But it is for revealing so much attractive but virtually unknown material that this recital invites warm gratitude: the fine melody of Die Uberfahrt, the urgenty dramatic Jordans Ufer, the fresh and touching Der Weichdorn, with its ingenious chainlike 'endless melody', the lovely homages to Bach in Ich bin ein guter Hirte and to Mozart in Das dunkle Auge. There are some squarish pieces, too, and some rather clumsy word-setting (notably in the jovially ferocious Fridericus Rex) but there are more than enough real discoveries here to make this a very welcome issue.
Even so, I enjoyed Hermann's recital even more. He sings more 'plainly' than Fischer-Dieskau, using the colours of his darkly beautiful voice more sparingly and in a more generalized way: he never breaks a line for the sake of expressively inflecting a single word and, unlike Fischer-Dieskau, can never be accused of over-acting. And yet they emerge as powerfully dramatic, these two tales of archetypal vices and virtues: the Emperor Charles V withdrawing from the vanity of the world to the cloister of San Yuste, the mythical knight Gregory repenting of his unknowing incest to such effect that he is elected Pope and lives to absolve the sin of his mother and wife. Broadly strophic these songs may be, but Hermann demonstrates that they contain sufficient subtle variety to rivet the attention when sung with unassertive gravity and intensity. The two enormous outer songs of Karl V (over eight minutes each) easily sustain their length, and the latter is one of Loewe's most impressive inventions: a hollowly dark evocation of the erstwhile Emperor's funeral, grimly proud memories of his former pomp and, to convey the eternal peace of the grave, naively touching images of a rainbow and of distant shepherds praying for the dead man's soul. Loewe's combination of sophistication and naive imagery ensures that the other cycle ends finely, too, in ceremonial grandeur, archaic chant and a moving prayer for forgiveness.
Both pianists are admirable, but Teldec have placed Hartmut Holl at a respectful distance behind Fischer-Dieskau. Geoffrey Parsons is more naturally positioned, and in a more chamber-like acoustic, by Claves. They provide, however (the single blot on a most distinguished recording), no translations of the song-texts, and only indifferent ones of the accompanying notes.'