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by Patrick Bade, |
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Richard Strauss – Selected Lieder Recordings 1901–46 Marston is the Rolls-Royce of historic vocal reissues. Immaculate and truthful transfers, luxurious presentation and excellent notes are what we expect from Marston and what we get here in this three- CD set of selected Lieder recordings made between 1901 and 1946, billed as the “sesquicentennial edition” and intended to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Richard Strauss. The problem inherent in such an enterprise is that of the 200 or so songs by Strauss, the dozen most popular tended to get recorded again and again. Eleven songs account for more than half of the 82 tracks and there are no fewer than seven versions of Morgen! and six of Ständchen. This repetition does have the advantage of enabling us to make some very fascinating comparisons between different interpreters. Indeed I could have done with a few more versions of Morgen!. Neither of my two favourite interpreters of this song has been included – Julius Patzak accompanied by an orchestra conducted by the composer and Elisabeth Schumann in either her acoustic or her orchestral version. I would have gladly swapped these for the closely-miked Jussi Björling, the insipid Lotte Schloss or the wooden Robert Hutt (despite Strauss’s marvellous piano accompaniment of the latter). But I suppose every passionate collector will have similar quibbles and they are hardly meant as serious criticism of this highly desirable set. The inclusion of Elise Feinhals and Lotte Schloss was presumably justified by the fact that they made the earliest commercial recordings of Strauss songs, rather by their intrinsic merit. The stolidly Anglo-Saxon David Bispham singing Ich trage meine Minne in an atrocious translation (“To none will I e’er my love discover”) and turning it into a dreary Edwardian ballad was another track I could have done without. Otherwise Marston have hardly put a foot wrong in their selection. There are of course those singers who might be described as “the usual suspects” as far as this repertoire is concerned – Elisabeth Schumann, Lotte Lehmann (why only one track for a singer so warmly endorsed in the notes?), Richard Tauber, Lotte Schöne, Elisabeth Rethberg, Joseph Schwarz, Gerhard Hüsch, Alexander Kipnis, etc. All more than justify their great reputations in the items selected. Despite some squeezed tone Elena Gerhardt sings more agreeably than usual in an early version of Wiegenlied, accompanied by Arthur Nikisch. For those seeking authenticity the six songs in which the German baritone Heinrich Schlusnus is accompanied by Strauss himself are to be specially recommended, though as Michael Aspinall points out this “authenticity” does not consist of strict adherence to the printed score and Strauss allows himself a quite extraordinary degree of creative freedom in his accompaniments. Unexpected light is thrown upon Strauss Lieder by several singers whom one would hardly associate with this repertoire – Frances Alda in Morgen!, Giuseppe Anselmi in Die Nacht (“La notte”), Cloe Elmo in Ständchen (Serenata) and Dusolina Giannini, who refines her refulgent Verdian soprano to offer idiomatic performances of Heimliche Aufforderung and Ständchen. Heddle Nash demonstrates that an English translation need not be the kiss of death in a feather-light performance of Ständchen (“Serenade”). As someone so closely associated with the bel canto repertoire both as a critic and as a performer, Michael Aspinall was an unexpected and even counter-intuitive choice to write the notes for a set devoted to Strauss Lieder. But he is always authoritative and like some of the above-mentioned non-German singers, illuminating in ways that more Teutonically biased critics might not have been. With such an embarrassment of riches it is hard to pick out individual performances for special praise. Two performances of less familiar songs that gave me great pleasure were Katherine Arkandy’s of Amor in which she displayed coloratura of spectacular fleetness and Rose Pauly’s noble and thrilling account of the Gesang der Apollopriesterin from a live broadcast of 1938. Patrick Bade
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