Walter Tilgner

Meistersinger (Master Singers) gathers six of the great singers of the bird world, recorded by Walter Tilgner: skylark, nightingale, thrush nightingale, song thrush, blackbird and golden oriole. Which of them has the loveliest song, the label notes, can probably never be answered. The disc lets each one sing at length instead.

Tilgner is a German biologist and bioacoustician, born in 1934 in Olomouc. He studied zoology and botany in Frankfurt in the 1950s, worked at the natural history museum on Lake Constance until his retirement, and is also known as a nature photographer. For Wergo he is author and producer of more than ten Natural Sound CDs, among them Nachtigall, Waldkonzert and Winter am Bodensee. The recordings span 1984 to 1999 and were made with Neumann KU 81i and KU 100 dummy-head microphones, on a Sony F1 Betamax and a Denon DTR 80P DAT recorder. The disc was mastered at Digitalstudio Feld in Stuttgart.

The skylark was recorded at Apetlon in the Seewinkel, Burgenland, on 24 May 1986, the nightingale in a reedbed of the Neusiedler See near Illmitz in 1987. The thrush nightingale, the longest section at almost 19 minutes, comes from the island of Rügen on the Baltic coast, in May 1996. Song thrush and blackbird were recorded in small woods on the Bodanrück near Lake Constance, one song thrush with pond frogs behind it. The golden oriole closes the disc, recorded near Illmitz in June 1998.

The Wire wrote that Tilgner "uses advanced computer software to capture the songs of the skylark, nightingale, blackbird and golden oriole, among others, with breathtaking clarity". The label hopes these songs will keep drawing people to listen to nature, and composers, poets and artists to bring such sounds into their work.

CD, Wergo SM 9010 2, released in 2000 in the Natural Sound series. Total time 69 minutes 29 seconds.