Alexander Kipnis: Rare Recordings Vol. 2 (Lied)

Here is the second playlist with rarer Kipnis material. This time it is again Lieder recordings or recordings with piano accompaniment.

At first, here are some Schubert recordings. They all come from the same LP where Schumann's Dichterliebe was published (see HIER  ) and only bear the label "Stockholm 1936". The fiery "Aufenthalt" is with audience, the other ones could be from a live recital or from broadcasts. The accompanist is not given. The "Gute Nacht" only includes the first verse (from four), then it is faded out. It gives us a glimpse of what a complete "Winterreise" by Kipnis could have been... 

 1.  Aufenthalt (Schubert)

 2.  Der Wanderer (Schubert)

 3.  Erlkönig (Schubert)

 4.  Gute Nacht (Schubert) 

At next come three Hugo Wolf Lieder. They were recorded for the "Hugo Wolf Society", but were not published there. When EMI released the complete recordings on 5 CDs some years ago, they were included, but they can not be found on the Music+Arts Double-CD. They are here in the Playlist as No. 5 to 7.

Then come three recordings with piano accompaniment, which are no Lieder but arias from Händel. The third one, "with apologies to Händel" by Diack, gives a childish text adapted to a Händel aria.

 8.  Berenice: Si tra i ceppi (Händel)

 9.  Ariodante: Al sen ti stringo e parto (Händel)

10. Little Jack Horner (Diack, with apologies to Haendel)

The next group contains some Russian Lieder, sung in Russian.

11. The Captive (Gretchaninov)

12. Over the Steppe (Gretchaninov)

13. O could I express but in sorrow (Malashkin)

14. Tilin bom (Stravinsky)

15. The Harvest of Sorrow (Rachmaninov)

16. O cease thy singing, maiden fair (Rachmaninov)

At last, there is a snippett from an Interview with Kipnis with Robert Sherman from (the broacast ?) "The Listening Room" about the difference between Lied and Opera Singing. It sounds like at the end of his career he prefered Lieder recitals to opera singing because in that way he could be his "own Toscanini".

17. Interview with Kipnis (no date given)

DOWNLOAD MP3 4shared

All these recordings are very fine interpretations, with not a single track which is not satisfying. Especially the Russian repertoire is something I am not accustomed to (except track 13,which I knew from early collecting days in the interpretation of Chaliapine), but has a great attraction with its sad undertones. The unpublished track 16 was taken from the RCA Vocal Series CD, and the Little Jack Horner of track 10 was taken from Youtube - not the best sound, but enough to get known to the recording. (I saw the disc listed often in auction lists, but I did not hear it until I began to deal with collecting and rehearsing all my Kipnis recordings a few weeks ago and tried to fill the gaps...)
I had some technical problems with track 7 which was fine as a Wave file but had heavy distortions at a certain place (around 1'25'') as soon as I changed it to MP3. I hope that I got it fixed now: It sounds okay while listeing to it but still looks and sounds terrible when I open the MP3 file with my WavePurity program. I never experienced something like this and could not solve the problem. I hope on your listening equipment it sounds good, too.


The third part of the Rare Recordings will be devoted to Opera live recordings of Alexander Kipnis.

I recommed strongly to read the articles from "The Record Collector" about the career of Kipnis and personal memories about his opera activities in Berlin. You can find it in my second blog:

http://operaonpaper.blogspot.de/2014/03/artikel-uber-alexander-kipnis.html