About this Artist

• Biography

Editorial Reviews

These performances, from between 1980 and 1983, are indeed legendary readings of Schubert's choral music -- rich, luxuriant, and yet perfectly controlled. They come from the baton of conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch, an underrated figure because he had the misfortune to work among such stars of the podium as Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan. Here he works in Bavaria, his home ground for much of his career, and these performances of famous Schubert masses show what he could do. Sawallisch was an opera conductor first and foremost, and he loved the music of Richard Strauss. The lush layers of vocal texture in these performances bespeaks an operatic technician, and Schubert has rarely seemed more of an arch-Romantic than here. Yet there is plenty of pure architectural intellect on display. Sawallisch is a master of orchestral detail. His handling of the timpani is one example: whenever it appears in the "Mass in E flat major, D. 950," it has a hypnotic effect. The Credo in that mass is absolutely masterful. The soloists, all among the greatest singers Germany produced in the last century, never succumb to the temptation to make Schubert's triple-meter tunes in this mass come out like Ländler, and their treatment of the Incarnatus is powerfully reverential. From there on out in the Credo, every detail fits together: the agonizing half-steps of the Crucifixus choral parts are replicated in brighter guises in the affirmations of faith that follow. This is essential Schubert from start to finish, in the grand Germanic tradition. The remastering is not ideally quiet, but it loses none of the tremendous detail that was Sawallisch's trademark. James Manheim, All Music Guide

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