John Dalmas wrote:

>Noticeably absent from Philip Peters' list of the Schubert song cycle is
>the recording on RCA Victor by mezzo-soprano Elena Gerhardt with Gerald
>Moore at the piano, regarded in its day by one noted critic as "the very
>essence of Schubertian lyricism."

This is true.  I spent literally decades trying to find this one but
it's very rare to the point of serious collectors being cinvinced that it
doesn't exist.  Whoever has a copy will be amply rewarded by me for a tape
(Amply rewarded? Well....in a tape swap or something like that as I'm not
a wealthy man by any stretch of the imaginiation).

>Also, incomplete cycles from baritone Heinrich Schlusnus with Sebastian
>Peschko or Franz Rupp at the piano (on London), bass Alexander Kipnis with
>Egon Petri (on Columbia), and even tenor John McCormack (in English) with
>orchestral accompaniment (on Victor).

These I have and more but I regard four or five songs not as an *incomplete
cycle* but as separate songs.  Not that I did leave Tauber in (12 of 24
songs).

>Among available recordings, I would recommend any one of the following:
>
>Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with Jorg Demus
>Peter Pears, with Benjamin Britten
>Hans Hotter, with Erik Werba (an earlier Hotter with Gerald Moore is not bad)

I'd say this is the only of the five official Hotter recordings that I
wouldn't recommended.  Uncharacteristically Hotters' voice shows strain.
Four years later, in 1969, when he recorded Winterreise for the last time
(live in Japan) he did a lot better.

>Christa Ludwig, with James Levine

There is a 1980 recording by Ludwig with Werba which is much better IMO.

>Peter Anders, with Michael Rauchheisen

I like the later one with Weissenborn better.  Not only is Weissenborn
a much better pianist than Raucheisen but I also prefer this more sober,
introverted version which probes deep into the dark secrets of Winterreise
to the more extroverted, opera-like earlier one.

>As the songs in this cycle will speak to you in a special way, almost any
>version may please you depending on your threshold of pain from the loss
>of love, and your degree of response to Schubert's melancholy landscape.

Now ain't that a fact?

Philip