Great Performers: Gundula Janowitz
The German-born Austrian Gundula Janowitz (b 1937) had one of those voices – like Maria Callas, Leontyne Price, Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – that is immediately identifiable from a single note. Silvery, with a very fast vibrato, it is almost instrumental in its purity and it earned her the championship, at a very young age, of Herbert von Karajan, who launched Janowitz's career and included her as part of his "company" of singers for some 25 years.
Read more…It was no doubt via Karajan that the British impresario and producer Walter Legge encountered the young soprano and he cast her, in 1964, as Pamina in Otto Klemperer's EMI recording of Mozart's 'Die Zauberflöte'. The purity and innocence of her singing are one of the set's glories (it also, incidentally, introduced the young Lucia Popp to the record-buying world). Mozart would form one of the musical cornerstones of Janowitz's career; the other would be Richard Strauss.
The lyric soprano roles of these two composers accompanied her throughout her musical life: in Mozart, embracing parts like Donna Anna (which she was due to record with George Szell, a project ended by his death), Fioridiligi and the 'Figaro' Countess (both recorded with Karl Böhm, the latter one of her greatest recorded roles); and in Richard Strauss, Ariadne and the 'Capriccio' Countess (both also recorded with Böhm), Arabella and the Marschallin. (Janowitz sang the Empress in 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' at a single performance in Vienna under Karajan before realising that the part was not for her.) Her Strauss recording par excellence, however, must be the Four Last Songs – dangerously slow, but with soaring lines that have rarely been equalled. This is the Janowitz voice as another instrument in Karajan’s great Berlin ensemble.
Outside opera, in which she rationed herself quite strictly, Janowitz was a keen Lieder singer and a regular soloist in oratorio and choral works: whenever Karajan wanted a heavenly glow to cap the rich choral and orchestral textures of a Beethoven 'Missa solemnis' or "Choral" Symphony, he would call on Janowitz (has the solo quartet for his 1962 Beethoven Ninth ever been bettered for colour and balance?), and in the soprano solo in Brahms's 'Ein deutsches Requiem' (a part she recorded with both Karajan and Haitink) she is the very personification of grief-assuaging gentleness. Deutsche Grammophon engaged her when they wanted to supplement Fischer-Dieskau's survey of Schubert's songs for male voice with those for a woman's voice – joined by Irwin Gage, she gave us some treasurable interpretations. Die junge Nonne, for example, palpitates with emotion and spiritual anxiety, while Gretchen has seldom touched the heart so powerfully.
Karajan, whose vocal casting in Wagner leaned towards a more lyrical sound, chose Janowitz as his Sieglinde in Die Walküre, and it paid off with a performance that fused femininity and palpable resolve – despite the odds, it remains one of the glories of his Ring cycle. She was no less persuasive in the Wagner roles to which you'd expect her to incline: a lovely Elsa in Rafael Kubelík's Lohengrin (opposite, sadly, Gwyneth Jones's far-from-lovely Ortrud) and a wonderful Eva in Kubelík's Meistersinger.
Stepping up from Marzelline (for Karajan) to Leonore (for Bernstein – an encounter she did not enjoy!) in Beethoven's Fidelio, Janowitz used the flint in her voice to powerful dramatic effect: here's a woman pushed to acts of amazing courage and loyalty. She is also a major adornment of Carlos Kleiber's classic Deutsche Grammophon recording of Weber's Der Freischütz (and can be heard on a live Vienna recording under Böhm), and lent her voice to Eugen Jochum's recording of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, a recording, made in the composer's presence, which finds her embracing the fearsomely high-lying lines with ease.
Her final recording, of a concert given in Athens on the anniversary of the death of Maria Callas, reveals a voice in impressive health, while her musicality and personality make the recording – her final public performance – all the more touching. Hers may not be the best-known name in the vocal firmament, but to her devotees she remains one of the undeniable greats.