Corporate imbecility dept number... well, umpteenth...

[fpb]

Schubert's song-cycle The winter journey (Die Winterreise) is, without a doubt, the most desolate, dark, devastating work of art I have ever met. It starts from shattering heartbreak - described in a way that every lover will recognize - and works its way down. Its final song, The organ-grinder, can be said to describe a despair beyond death. In two hundred years of programmatic pessimism, expressionism, existentialism, and so on, no artist has ever surpassed Schubert's depth of darkness, indeed, few have come close.

I have a music cassette featuring the epoch-making account of this literally terrifying piece of work by the great German singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. The cover artist drew in a happy little picture of a Christmas-card-like sledge with bells.

Comments

*giggles*

[threeoranges.livejournal.com]

The cover artist drew in a happy little picture of a Christmas-card-like sledge with bells.

Where did they find THAT artist?!

"Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain? Mm, sounds to me like a nice hillside with perhaps a picnic spread upon a chequered blanket..."

Re: *giggles*

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It's not the poor sodding artist who ought to be blamed. I mean, was there not any kind of editorial or publishing team to notice the oddity of the idea? And, mind you, the brand in question is a subsidiary of DGG, who, when Ah were a lad, stood for quality in classical music.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I will, thanks. But they will have to be good if they are to hold up against F-D. Women have also sung it - I heard some of the songs done extremely well by Christa Ludwig. Incidentally, one oddity I am very curious about are the rumoured performances of some Schubert songs by Maria Callas (!).

[fpb.livejournal.com]

How do you feel about Peter Schreier, then?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I only have Wunderlich in the Haydn Creation record during which he died - saddest premature loss, along with Kathleen Ferrier and Jaqueline Dupre', I can think of. But I have Schreier doing Die Schoene Muellerin, and he defined that cycle for me.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thank you. How do you propose to do it? I am not very good at online stuff yet, I have only just started to burn roms.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I guess this address will do as well as any. It is Yahoo, after all. And thanks again.

I just said something very stupid...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Because I was using my Yahoo account to answer, I did not stop to think that I was actually answering on the LJ. My e-mail address is fabiopaolo_barbieri@yahoo.it. 'Scuse stupidity again.