GREAT RECORDINGS phase 18

ELISABETH SCHWARZKOPF / IRMGARD SEEFRIED

Soprano Duets

Dvorák
Monteverdi
Carissimi
R. Strauss
Humperdinck

3 92057 2

Mono
ADD

Recorded 1947 & 1955
74 minutes

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"When sung so charmingly and with such good balance as they are by the Misses Schwarzkopf and Seefried, these pretty pieces are completely effective."
(The Gramophone)

The basis of this CD is a record of duets that the two sopranos made with Gerald Moore in London in 1955.

Again, doyen of vocal authorities John Steane recounts from personal experience: ‘Schwarzkopf and Seefried sang together many times on stage and in the recording studios, but their afternoon duet recital in London on 15 May 1955 was a unique event...The recital took place in the Royal Festival Hall, where Schwarzkopf had sung in the inaugural concert just four years earlier and which still felt fresh and new. I remember...the delight of the afternoon’s music...induced a rare sense of the privilege of life in the capital and indeed, at the end at last of the postwar Age of Austerity, of life in general.’

The Times reported appreciatively: the two singers were ‘mutually attuned to a nicety’, the voices blending ‘as flute and clarinet’, while the following year Gramophone magazine found the Dvorák duets particularly pleasing: ‘when sung so charmingly and with such good balance as they are by the Misses Schwarzkopf and Seefried these pretty pieces are completely effective’.

This new state-of-the art remastering from the early tape originals improves greatly on this compilation’s previous appearance on Références.