Dietrich-Fischer Dieskau recorded Franz Schubert’s Die Winterreise around thirty times. His “apprentice piece” was the very first recording of the cycle for the RIAS – a youthful, immediate and almost operatic interpretation of Wilhelm Müller’s poems ranging between world-weariness and romantic irony. He managed this despite the difficult conditions in January 1948 surrounding the recording with the pianist Klaus Billing.
The fluctuating currents of postwar Berlin affected the speed of the tape and, in addition to that, more than half of the cycle had to be re-recorded by the exhausted singer after technical problems became apparent. This careful digital re-mastering of the original tape furnishes the historical recording, despite its technical faults, with a previously unheard brilliance and immediacy.
