The German tenor Peter Anders was born on 1 July 1908 so this
3-CD set with wartime recordings from German radio archives is
an 100th Anniversary Edition. He may not be as well known outside
Germany as some other tenors – and there are extra-musical reasons.
He rose to fame at a time when the war over-shadowed everything
else and hampered, or at least delayed, many promising international
careers. He was enormously popular in Germany, appeared only occasionally
in other countries, became a favourite by the Nazi regime, which
soiled his reputation after the war and when he was at the height
of his powers, ready for his great breakthrough as a heroic tenor,
having started as a Mozart singer, he died in a car crash, aged
46. He was then scheduled to make his Metropolitan debut before
long.
Fortunately he left
behind a comprehensive recorded legacy, having been an exclusive
Telefunken recording artist from the mid-1930s, later recording
for Electrola and in the 1950s for Deutsche Grammophon. I got
to know him in the very infancy of my record collecting, finding
in a shop a reduced price 10-inch LP with some of his Mozart
recordings from 1935 or -36. This happened to be my first recordings
of any Mozart arias and even though he sang everything in German
– also Don Ottavio’s two arias from Don Giovanni – I
found great pleasure in his singing: a beautiful, well schooled
voice, ringing out with freedom and lyrical warmth and elegance,
and excellent enunciation. Much later I came by a double LP
on Acanta with a wartime recording of Schubert’s Die Winterreise,
which I have ever since regarded as one of the best readings
of this multifarious work. Some years ago I reviewed
a Preiser CD with more material from radio archives as well
as some Electrola and DG recordings from the early 1950s.
The criticism I
had then is applicable also to the present box. The quality
of his voice is never in question but he has a tendency to overexpose
it, to press beyond its natural limits, and too often his highest
notes become pinched. He is also sometimes overemphatic which
mars his otherwise excellent Mozart recordings on CD 3. All
three arias were also on that Telefunken LP and when I dusted
off that old friend I met a more classically balanced Mozart
singer, lighter of touch. The romance from Die lustigen Weiber
von Windsor is marred by an uncommonly harsh recording with
the voice fairly distant, the harp close to the microphone and
a fizzy edge to voice and strings. He also sounds strained and
he lacks the poetry that should be found in a good Fenton.
His Hoffmann is
sensitive and in the duet with Antonia he is partnered by an
Erna Berger in good form. The excerpts from La bohème,
sung of course in German, are in effect two scenes: the first
encounter between Rodolfo and Mimi in act I, from her knock
on the door till the end of act – but there are no other Bohemians
between Mimi’s aria and the love duet. The excerpt from act
III (CD 3 tr. 12) begins just before Mimi’s second aria. Mimi
here is the once famous Maria Cebotari, who died from cancer
in 1949, not yet forty. An extremely beautiful woman she also
had a career as a film actress but she was indeed a superb singer
as well. Her somewhat fluttery tone can initially be off-putting
but she sings with glow and when she lets go in her arias I
believe more listeners besides myself get goose-pimples. Anders
is an ardent and sensitive Rodolfo but he sounds uncomfortable
on the highest notes and the high C is pinched. Once there was
on a DG 10-inch LP a recording of this first act scene with
Anders and Cebotari (17 205 LPE) but I can’t believe it’s the
same recording. It should also be said that Anders wisely sings
the lower option at the end of the duet instead of following
the soprano up to the high C.
The German composer,
conductor and theatre director Max von Schillings is probably
best known for his opera Mona Lisa, premiered in Stuttgart
in 1915. It was a great success and even reached the Metropolitan
Opera. His Glockenlieder (Bell Songs) was a new work
to me and they are well worth a revival. A recording in modern
sound might be a revelation. The tonal language is late romantic:
two tablespoons of Wagner, one heaped ditto Richard Strauss
with some Puccini rippled on top. A rather tasty mix, skilfully
orchestrated and the singing is in a recitative like parlando
style, rather operatic. Peter Anders obviously liked the songs
and is in excellent form, producing strong heroic singing. The
cycle is cleverly squeezed in between the Bohème excerpts
and Strauss’s Morgen, sung as an encore, beautifully
and mostly with his exquisite half-voice.
All in all there
are swings and roundabouts on this third disc but actually more
to admire than to be irritated by. One irritant, throughout
the set, is of course the quality of the sound. Recorded during
wartime conditions the tapes suffer from a great deal of distortion
and the digital remastering hasn’t been able remove all the
defects. But it is a decent sound and readers accustomed to
historical reissues won’t be much offended. The ‘fizz’, the
edge on the voice is there more or less on all the numbers in
this set but it is less irritating on the fist two discs, devoted
entirely to German Lieder, where Peter Anders is accompanied
by probably the greatest accompanist of the period, the indefatigable
Michael Raucheisen. He was born in 1889 and from the beginning
of the 1920s until the end of WW2 he was accompanist for the
cream of the German speaking Lieder singers, including Frida
Leider, Erna Berger, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Karl Erb and Helge
Rosvaenge. He married soprano Maria Ivogün in 1933 and from
that same year he saw it as the task of his life to get as many
German songs as possible recorded. His collaboration with Peter
Anders was fruitful indeed, and just as the Winterreise
mentioned above, it is the Schubert songs, occupying all of
CD 1, that are the pinnacle of Peter Anders’s achievement here.
Apart from some unnecessary intrusive ‘h’s his singing is spotless,
lively and expressive and sung with ‘face’. Readers who want
firm proof to this should listen to Im Frühling, with
phrasing and actual tone so marvellously adapted to the song.
Of contemporaneous tenors he is actually comparable to the great
Aksel Schiøtz – and I can’t think of higher praise. In Das
Geheimnis his honeyed half-voice contrasts effectively with
some Heldentenor brilliance. Der Einsame is a bit stiff
but he inserts some elegant grace-notes. The seven songs from
Schwanengesang – six of the seven Rellstab settings plus
Seidl’s Die Taubenpost show him at his very best with
a masterly Ständchen as the crowning glory. He also makes
the most of the overlong Der Liedler.
On CD 2 the two
Beethoven songs are splendid and his Schumann is fascinating,
marred only by some overemphasis. Best of them is the sensitive
Loreley. In Familiengemälde Tiana Lemnitz sounds
throatier than I remember her from other recordings but she
nuances well.
I’m less sure about
his Brahms, where he too often presses too hard, and his Wolf
readings don’t seem to have settled enough, but in the two Strauss
songs he is in his element again.
There are no texts
enclosed but the booklet has extensive notes about Peter Anders.
All is not gold that glitters on this set but there is enough
of that genuine article to make this an enticing proposition
– in spite of my reservations.
Göran Forsling
