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...Fischer-Dieskau is today Germany's most celebrated musical export. He is booked three years in advance, shuttles between continents like a suburban commuter to meet his breakneck schedule, averages an income of $225,000 a year. Betwixt and between, he turns out records like flapjacks. With 166 LPs to his credit, he is far and away the most recorded classical singer ever. While enthusiastic about the wealth of opera roles he has yet to try, Fischer-Dieskau is less optimistic about the future of the lieder. "There is no question that contemporary music finds itself in a grave...
VERDI: LA FORZA DEL DESTINO (RCA Victor; 4 LPs). Schippers again, but without the imagination he gives to Macbeth. He just keeps things going along and lets his experienced performers (Leontyne Price, Richard Tucker, Giorgio Tozzi) take over. Price is at her very best. Her voice magnifies Verdi's intent and makes every hoary old aria sound as if it were written yesterday. Tucker at 50 gives every indication that he can go on singing forever-a cheering prospect. Only Tozzi is disappointing. His voice sounds dry, and he does the role of the padre like a priest droning...
BARTOK: STRING QUARTETS 1-6 (Columbia; 3 LPs). The Juilliard String Quartet, after many performances of the works and a previous set of recordings, attacks each quartet with consummate skill and understanding. The musicians are warmly expansive in the romantic first quartet (1908), pungently Magyar in the second (1915-17), and harshly abrasive in the ugly, expressionist third (1927) with its abusive hammerings and pluckings, yawling glissandos and jerky rhythms. The strings sing again in the last three quartets, which in spite of some jagged polyphony, frequently dissolve into swaying melody. The result is an album of the finest chamber...
BRAHMS: SYMPHONIES COMPLETE (Deutsche Grammophon; 4 LPs). Herbert von Karajan's greatest strength lies in the romantic repertory, and one would expect an outstanding set of performances, especially following his recent highly successful recording of the nine Beethoven symphonies. The Berlin Philharmonic sounds as lustrous as ever, and there are wonderful, broad, sensuous swells of melody. But Von Karajan too often masks structure with sonority, allows the pulse to waver and then summons portentous climaxes that turn out to be no more substantial than giant thunderheads with more noise than content...
MONTEVERDI: THE CORONATION OF POPPEA (Angel; 2 LPs). Monteverdi's last opera was the first with psychologically true characters who tell their story in almost continuous melody rather than long declamations. Conducted by John Pritchard for the Glyndebourne Festival, this is a cut-down version, but it includes all the scenes leading up to the triumph of immorality. The able cast includes Tenor Richard Lewis as the love-struck Nero, Soprano Magda Laszlo as Poppea and Soprano Frances Bible as Ottavia...