RECORD OF THE YEAR 2000!
Hans Hotter
...singing Brahms, Schubert, Strauss, Loewe and Wolf,
taken 'live' from a recital given in Hanover in 1961,
Orfeo d'Or (Harmonia Mundi) C507991B (mid-price)
This review first appeared in the INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW issue of June 2000.
I require the thickest thesaurus of besotted admiration to pad the passionate panegyric of adoration that this disc warrants. It is stupendous, stupefying, humbling and uplifting. It is hopeless to talk of mere singing here, for each song envelops us with the breezes and skies, earth and streams of a whole life, its regrets, longings, loves and dreads, tears, smiles, ironies and triumphs all as vivid as the pattern on your hand; yet as a platter of singing it overflows with technical miracles of colouring, breath manipulation, judicious husbandry as well as a lavishness that leaves you unable to think.
Nearly half the songs are Goethe settings and many of Hotter's favourite songs are here, such as Schubert's Am Bach im Frühling, Alinde and Sei mir gegrüsst, and Loewe's version of Erlkönig, which he always convincingly preferred to the Schubert. For my money these are the finest of his recordings of such pieces. Indeed, it is hard to think of a finer Lieder recital on record. His Winterreise records don't quite count, nor the overwhelming Dichterliebe from Prieser.
For one thing, he is in tremendous voice, the forte never forced but with a billow of reserve that achieves intimacy as well as immediacy, the piano bristling with a pillow's cotton texture close to. For another, the magnificence of enunciation, the lips so vivid as they shape, carve or caress the warm flow of deep-mined air, is a ravishing delight. Sei mir gegrüsst becomes with Hotter one of the most colossally intimate utterances in music, seething with unexpressed eroticism, stretching reach beyond grasp with an intensity that stops your heart. The proximity to the absolute pulse of life is giddy-making and the way in which this fires you with energy fuelled both by wonder and gratitude dries your throat. Though not that of some nit-wit in the Hanover audience who twice has to lob his "Ho!" ahead of the applause.
Walter Martin gives Hotter the stage with attentive and crystalline playing that balances the colour of the voice. As for the recording, you are there. Glorious. Unendingly, cup-overflowingly glorious. Ho, indeed.