L'art De Ferenc Fricsay

CD L'art De Ferenc Fricsay Ferenc Friscay

Between September 1949 (Tchaikovsky's Fifth) and November 1961 (Hary Janos), Deutsche Grammophon made 180 recordings with Fricsay conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, the RIAS orchestra, and that of the Bavarian Radio. We must add to this list a great number of public and other recordings, made by RIAS Berlin (today DeutschlandRadio). After Fricsay's premature death in 1963, DGG released three important editions: a) in 1977 appeared a big LP collection with silver jackets, including several first-time issues; b) in 1994 a first 10-CD set was released called "Fricsay: A Portrait"; c) and in 2003, a second 9-CD set appeared called "A Life in Music." Finally, a few years ago, the German label Audite released an important Fricsay edition. At the same time, several labels like Walhall or Relief issued more or less legally a certain number of sound archives, mainly operas. In Fricsay's discography, Mozart and Bartok are the two most recorded composers; whereas, regrettably, there exist no recordings of any Mahler and/or Bruckner symphony (these were composers he conducted rarely if at all). Likewise, we have no violin concerto by Beethoven; and no piano concerto by Beethoven (except for his Third Concerto with Annie Fischer in Munich, in December 1957); no Mendelssohn symphony…
The present set includes two interesting documents: an autobiographical text in which Fricsay recounts his youth and his beginnings as a conductor, and an interview made in Paris in 1958.