Carl Seemann's Complete Deutsche Grammophon Recordings box set features recordings with Fritz Lehmann, Berliner Philharmoniker, NDR Sinfonieorchester, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Bamberger Symphoniker, Mnchner Philharmoniker, Ferdinand Leitner and many more. Highlights include his celebrated Mozart records on 11 CDs and his famous Beethoven and Brahms duo recordings with violinist Wolfgang Schneider.

It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. […] The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding.

Conductor Ferdinand Leitner (1912-96), learning his trade from masters like Walter, Busch, Richter and Karl Muck (as rehearsal pianist at Bayreuth), gained the experience that lead to his being dubbed the "singers' conductor" by all who worked with him during a long and lustrous career marked by his tenure as Zurich Opera music director (1969-84) and some 300 commercial recordings. The 1970s-80s Bayreuth stalwart, bass-baritone Franz Mazura as Tamerlano and famed American lyric soprano Helen Donath as Asteria headline this 1966 Leitner-led performance of Handel’s Tamerlano.

Five Piano Concertos and the Piano Sonata No. 32, opus 111, recorded in stereo in 1962 and 1964, respectively, by Wilhelm Kempff [1895-1991] and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Ferdinand Leitner [1912-96]. The sonata, the composer’s last, is certainly more than a mere filler, from the opening hesitancy of the ‘Allegro con brio ed appassionato’ to the extended closing section of the second movement.

This recording is the first official release in any format of this once-in-a-lifetime concert performance featuring Dame Joan Sutherland and Fritz Wunderlich. In 1959 performances of Handel were just beginning to embrace the original instrument movement making this recording an invaluable historic record of performance practice. In addition to musicological interest, the CDs present Joan Sutherland at the beginning of her illustrious career in the full bloom of youth. She was flown in as a last minute replacement for the scheduled soprano and proceeded to give a virtuoso performance of the demanding title role. Full of Handel's gorgeous melodies and with vocal fireworks in bountiful supply, it is no wonder that Sutherland completely awed the German public. She is joined by Fritz Wunderlich, the acclaimed German tenor, in their one-and-only collaboration. He as well was a last minute replacement and rises to the exacting demands of Handel. His rich and pliant tone is perfectly suited to the technical and dramatic demands of the opera.

It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. […] The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding. The roles of Caesar and Sextus, moreover, are taken by men, and there is not a countertenor in sight.

Most notable is a Liebestod of superbly controlled intensity. In the Narrative and Curse the exultant, passionate power of Varnay's singing exposes one hint of mannerism—a tendency to press too hard on certain syllables, and to seem, in consequence, an Isolde more unyielding than volatile. The difficulty a great Wagnerian can have in scaling her voice down is most noticeable in the first of the Wesendonk Lieder: Varnay is best in the rapt, inner intensity of No. 3, "Im Treibhaus". Such inner intensity is also abundant in the long extract from Act 2 of Tristan.