Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau / Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, Otto Klemperer
Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem
Gramophone Magazine June 2010: 250 Greatest Recordings of All Time
Juggernaut power in Klemperer's famous recording.
Re-issue of the 'Great Recordings' edition. Otto Klemperer is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century. Following the end of World War II, Klemperer returned to Continental Europe to work at the Budapest Opera (1947-1950). There he became an itinerant conductor, guest conducting the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, WDR Orchestra Köln, Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Philharmonia of London. His career was turned around in 1954 by the London-based producer Walter Legge, who recorded Klemperer in Beethoven, Brahms and much else with his hand-picked orchestra, the Philharmonia, for the EMI label. He became the first principal conductor of the Philharmonia in 1959. He settled in Switzerland. Klemperer also worked at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, sometimes stage-directing as well as conducting, as in a 1963 production of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin. With one of the towering conductors of his or any day in control, this is truly one of the great recordings of the 20th century. In today’s search for authenticity of performance, smaller forces, lighter timbres and faster speeds are brought into play, but these seem to ignore a performing tradition passed down from the composer's time and made manifest here in Klemperer's grand overview of this work.
