Hardly any other singer was more associated with and devoted to the nigh 300 songs by the Austrian composer Hugo Wolf than Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Utterly convinced by the richness of Wolf’s oeuvre, Fischer-Dieskau took Wolf’s previously hardly heeded songs to many stages throughout the world. Reger was frowned upon as an ‘awkward traditionalist’ and ‘piece worker’, but Reger’s songs show a completely different, moving and profound side of the composer, who takes a significant position in the song composition of the turn of the century. Even Fischer-Dieskau did not devote himself to Reger exactly frequently, unlike his downright encyclopaedic approach in other fields. In his recording of a number of particularly fine gems among Reger’s orchestral songs, he was supported by Gerd Albrecht. The outcome is an artistic symbiosis of the highest quality, testifying to a passion and ardency that can be found seldom: a veritable sound document!
