Hermann Prey - Hermann Prey: Essentials (2019)

He sings freshly, feeling is everything to him, intellect only sound. In a 1965 article, for example, Spiegel characterized the natural style of singing of Hermann Prey, who, with his casual manner, can be considered as the singer's counterpart to the intellectual romanticist Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. On July 11, 2019 Hermann Prey would have been 90 years old. To mark the occasion, Deutsche Grammophon is now releasing a digital album that brings together 25 essentials from the great baritone. The compilation celebrates the charismatic singer as a gifted fast-paced artist, who understood just as brilliantly on coquettish Mozart rolls as on the often tragic seriousness of the romantic art song.

Of indomitable charm was his Papageno, which was one of his parade roles. Hardly anyone gave Mozart's magic flute aria "The Birdcatcher Am I" so much wit, so much soul, so much real enthusiasm. But also a living Figaro was Prey. His ravishing presentation of arias like "Non più andrai" or "Se vuol ballare, signor Contino" is a striking proof. His breathtaking interpretations of romantic art songs, first and foremost those of Franz Schubert, the singer's favorite composer, show that Prey, who was always a crowd-pleaser, was the dance-obsessed, the ever-flirting Prey, who was an audience favorite par excellence.
  
Songs like "An Sylvia" or "The Wanderer" have never again been presented with such a natural energy, as passionately as unsentimentally. The same applies to songs by Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig Spohr, Gustav Mahler, Hans Pfitzner or Richard Strauss. Prey sings her in every manner, completely unopposed, as if he had never done anything else. In Christmas carols by Peter Cornelius, his romantic gift then assumes solemn dimensions, whereas in the duet with Júlia Várady in the bat-aria "This decency, so manners" again the winking entertainer emerges.