Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner

Thanks to a bit of virtuoso clipboardery I’ve whupped this philologically challenged provincial Californian software into replicating that pesky Danish/Norwegian fifth letter of Aksel Schiøtz’s surname, but in order to confuse and frustrate Googlers and surfers as little as possible I want, prophylactically, to zing in a version that’ll at least make this bloggery noticeable to them: plain old Schiotz.  (For obvious reasons, at first encounter that proper Danish version gave Anglophone eyes pause, and when I eventually explained to Aksel Schiøtz himself why, he wrote and showed me a letter to the BBC, which had a recording date lined up, requesting them from then on to bill him as Aksel Schøtz, with that problematical fourth letter scrapped.  In due time they replied with appropriate dead-pan British solemnity that they would gladly do as he wished.  That deviation didn’t last long, though, and as Aksel’s fame steadily grew, he came world-famous among connoisseurs either as Schiøtz or its German first cousin: Schiötz.)

This week my heart leapt up when this supremely great (but still insufficiently known) tenor’s son Søren so kindly sent me the brand-new 11-CD edition “The complete Aksel Schiøtz Recordings - 1933-1946″, and I want to bring this bonanza to the attention of everyone in the world I can reach who appreciates the rare combination of musical intelligence and one of the most ravishingly beautiful tenor voices of all time

Starting fifty-eight years ago, the Schiøtz family in Denmark welcomed me in almost as a brand-new 25-year-old family member; they all became very dear to me indeed, and I remain at least in email contact with their eldest, Søren, who today, along with his energetic wife, operates a firm in Jutland (the mainland part of that wonderful country) that does a worldwide business reclaiming areas of the earth polluted by various kind of ecological stupidity.

Rarely in my life have I reacted as galvanically to any musical discovery as I did about sixty years ago when Herbert Kubly, then Music Editor of Time, played me a new 78-rpm import on the British His Master’s Voice label containing probably the finest single recording Aksel ever made, the two big tenor arias from Handel’s Messiah.  I recall that I had Kubly immediately play it again for me, stunned and incredulous that any human being had ever attained that breath-taking degree of perfection, and probably yet even another time before I left his West 13th Street apartment in New York, walking on air over what I immediately recognized as one of the musical discoveries of my life, on fire to learn as much as possible about this astonishing singer whose name I’d never before even heard.

When Aksel died in 1975, the telegram to me here in Berlin from his admirable wife Gerd in Copenhagen propelled me directly to my desk to pour out what in fact my heart wrote into a short obituary article I sent to High Fidelity, which its admirable editor Roland Gelatt not only immediately rushed into print but which his successors at the magazine also included in the book High Fidelity’s Silver Anniversary Treasury published in 1976. 

I guess I’ll never feel I’ve paid adequate tribute to Aksel, let alone adequate recompense to all members of his family, who figured so uniquely in my transformation from Texas-born New Yorker into a European and now a naturalized German, but at least I can excavate and again make available that 32-year-old tribute High Fidelity rushed into its issue dated July 1975:

Occasionally - very infrequently - a musical performer appears who for one reason or another establishes himself in a category apart from almost all his colleagues.  Thanks to his voice, his musicality, his intelligence, and the medium of phonographic recording, the great Danish tenor Aksel Schiøtz, whom leukemia and an intestinal cancer vanquished in Copenhagen at the age of 68, belonged in such a category.  Admirers who knew his recorded repertoire regarded him, to put it simply, as unique.  Relatively few, though, knew the details of the tragic episodes that restricted that great singing largely to recordings.

And what recordings!  When they were imported to New York in 1946 or 1947, they caused - especially two breath-taking Messiah arias - a true sensation among collectors, repeating an earlier sensation in England.  Fortunately, before illness abruptly cancelled his public career soon after the war, HMV in Denmark and England had recorded a lengthy repertoire, including two complete major Lieder cycles, Schubert’s Schöne Müllerin and Schumann’s Dichterliebe, with Gerald Moore at the piano.

Outrageous fortune has surely plagued few artists - few human beings - as it repeatedly did Aksel Schiøtz.  Starting adulthood as a provincial schoolteacher, he had a rich tenor voice full of vibrato but free of tremolo, with an uncanny baritone timbre throughout its range.  Many admirers thought that voice justified a full-time professional career, but the three children Schiøtz and his admirable, stalwart wife Gerd had to feed and clothe made him hesitate.  (And later, twin girls made their responsibilities even more sobering.)  Finally, however, he took the plunge.

The morning after his professional début in Copenhagen, Danes woke up to find their little country occupied by Hitler’s Wehrmacht.  With foreign appearances now impossible, Schiøtz set about using his art for the comfort and reassurance of his countrymen.  As a patriot, he dropped the entire German repertoire for the duration - a crippling sacrifice for a Lieder specialist.  To fill that void he revived much very worthwhile but neglected, or even forgotten, Danish music.  He sang everywhere - in schools, in churches - sometimes defiantly, such as at the funeral of the patriotic writer Kai Munk, whom the Germans had killed.  After the war the King of Denmark awarded Schiøtz the country’s equivalent of a knighthood.  Literally everyone in Denmark knew him, admired him, and loved him.

Wartime broadcasts of Schiøtz’s early recordings had caused important ears to prick up in England.  As soon as possible, HMV brought him to London for extensive recording, and at Glyndebourne’s world premiere of The Rape of Lucretia, which had dual casting in all roles, he alternated with Peter Pears as the Male Chorus.  That summer began lifelong friendships with Benjamin Britten, Kathleen Ferrier, and Pears.  It also brought the first symptom - double vision - of a tumor acusticus, the same type of growth behind the ear that had killed George Gershwin.

Schiøtz survived the operation he had in Stockholm, but the surgeon’s unavoidable severing of a nerve cable affected his body as if a guillotine had sliced it in half frontally from head to toe, leaving the right half blind, dumb, and lame.  The surgeon said that Schiøtz would never sing again but that, with luck, he might walk again.

In 1948, after months of recuperation during a tramp-steamer voyage, indomitable Aksel Schiøtz gave a comeback recital in Copenhagen.  He was brought to New York soon thereafter for three Town Hall recitals.  The first sold out immediately, the second attracted about half-capacity, the third drew virtually no one who had paid for his ticket.  Some years later, Schiøtz attempted another comeback as a baritone.  Tapes he made then in America (where he taught) of Schubert’s Winterreise cycle - never, unfortunately, released on discs - proved that nothing had affected that great artistry.  He called the book he wrote simply The Singer and His Art, and he could lay more legitimate claim to that title than could, or can, the vast majority of his colleagues.

And now at least we have those unique recordings made almost thirty years ago.  As long as people set stylus to disc, they will remain treasures beyond price, inimitable examples of what the human voice, in very rare instances, can communicate.

To find the most convenient source in your part of the world for ordering this set, that wonderful klein aber sehr fein Danish recording firm danacord has thoughtfully provided this international directory.

And thanks to my sedulous attempt to do your research for you, clicking here will enable you, thanks to the a bit of Internet sleight of hand, even to schnorr a bit of actually listening to ear-teasing samples of those magical recordings.