Great Performers: Christa Ludwig
The mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig was, without doubt, one of the greatest singers of the post-War period, a singer whose musicality and personality made her a favourite with conductors as different as Karajan and Bernstein, Böhm and Klemperer.
Read more…Born into a theatre family – her mother was a mezzo who also sang dramatic soprano roles, her father, once a tenor, was Opera Director in Aachen – Ludwig learned her craft at close quarters, her totally secure technique guaranteeing her a career of almost 50 years. As happy in opera as she was alongside colleagues in an oratorio, Ludwig was also a magnificent Lieder singer, one of the first women to sing Schubert’s 'Winterreise'.
It was the EMI producer Walter Legge who welcomed Ludwig into his unofficial ‘company’ when he was re-building and developing the art of record-making in the years after the war. With Herbert von Karajan as the conductor, Ludwig would record roles like Octavian opposite Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s Marschallin ('Der Rosenkavalier') and Suzuki to Maria Callas’s Butterfly. She then worked with Otto Klemperer, taping other enduring classics of the gramophone such as Beethoven’s Leonore, the mezzo part in Mahler’s 'Das Lied von der Erde' or Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody.
The cornerstones of her repertoire were Mozart, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Mahler, where her wonderfully focused and firm voice, tinged with a rich palette of emotional colours, were an asset and contributed to the still unassailable greatness of such recordings as the live 1966 Bayreuth 'Tristan und Isolde' conducted by Karl Böhm. Ludwig was a wonderful actress, whether on stage or simply with the voice, which made her an ideal recording artist. She brought so much sensitivity to such anguished, complex roles as the Dyer’s Wife in Richard Strauss’s 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' that the character takes on a new dimension when she sings it.
There was a brief period when – following her mother’s example though without her career-damaging choices of repertoire – she sang soprano roles, the Marschallin and Leonore among them. This resulted in thrilling recordings, but it is as a mezzo that she will be primarily remembered.
Ludwig’s musical relationship with Karajan, Böhm and Klemperer gave us numerous riches, but it was the partnership with Leonard Bernstein that she particularly cherished ("We loved each other!") and there are numerous mementos of them making music together – a Brahms song, a Mahler symphony, or, most enchanting of all, Ludwig’s Old Lady in Bernstein’s own 'Candide', a rare example of Ludwig singing in English and investing every word with humour and saucy innuendo.
Ludwig’s contribution to music making was enormous; as a mezzo she was always denied the true status of diva (in its purest meaning), but her artistry, musical intelligence and sensitivity, combined with a beautiful velvety voice, made her a singer that time will never forget. She was one of the greats.