Great Recordings Of The Century - Schubert: Die Schone Mullerin / Fischer-Dieskau, Moore

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has become an all-pervasive and increasingly mannered recording presence in the last few decades of his life. As a result, it takes an earlier, fresher recording such as this to remind you what a great singer he was. This 1961 outing with Schubert's second-greatest song cycle (the first being Winterreise) is consistently lively, straightforward, passionate, and sincere, almost completely devoid of the show-off trickery that mars many of his later efforts. Best of all, the voice has a supple richness that allows him to sound boyish at the start of this song cycle about a heartbroken youth, though he also has a vocal weight to go to the depths of tragedy as the protagonist experiences escalating devastation. Gerald Moore accompanies with his customary discreet intelligence. This recording has achieved classic status for good reason. --David Patrick Stearns