Elisabeth Grümmer (soprano)
Die schönste Stimme der Romantik
rec. 1946-1961, ADD
DOCUMENTS 600215 [10 CDs: ca 11 hrs]
Elisabeth Grümmer is well-known to lovers of the lyric soprano’s art and left a legacy of cherishable recordings, but would probably have been even better known, especially to the British market, had she, like a certain contemporary colleague, been married to EMI’s record producer who was keen to promote her art…
As it was, her husband was killed in 1944 in an Allied bombing raid on Aachen, where she had met Karajan, who was Generalmusikdirektor of the opera there and had encouraged her in her career; she made her operatic debut for him there in 1940 as a Flower Maiden in Parsifal. Although she sang in major opera houses in Europe and the United States, she was most frequently heard in Berlin, Salzburg and Bayreuth and her repertoire was relatively limited; her reputation was mainly built on performances and recordings of four composers who, superficially at least, appear quite disparate in their vocal demands: Bach, Mozart, Strauss and Wagner – but she brought the same musicality and warmth, beauty and purity of tone to her singing of them all. She was never a showy or extravagant artist; perhaps her nearest vocal cousins would be silvery-voiced sopranos such as Gundula Janowitz, whose voice and scope were similar, and Lisa Della Casa.
This 10 CD compilation brings together in one super-bargain box many live and studio recordings of arias, duets, ensembles and excerpts from German operas and oratorios, plus Lieder. Apart from the major Mozart operas sung in Italian, Grümmer sang almost exclusively in German, hence the arias on CD 7 dedicated to non-German composers are, as was the custom in the 50s, sung in her vernacular and there are also excerpts in German from Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro - billed as Figaros Hochzeit. In Strauss, she mostly sang Der Rosenkavalier, graduating – if that is the right term for describing the role transition – from Octavian to the Marschallin. She also sang the Four Last Songs – not represented here – but I am not aware of her having sung any other Strauss.
Her fast, slightly pulsing vibrato is never obtrusive and in combination with her special timbre makes her voice immediately recognisable. My MWI colleague Stephen Greenbank very favourably reviewed her Mozart recital on BR Klassik back in 2014. He notes that by 1964, her voice was losing some of its bloom but all the recordings on that disc and in this boxset were made before then, so we hear the voice at its freshest. As a bonus, I was pleasantly surprised to find that disc shorn of its plastic casing and tucked into the second-hand box set I bought – but it in any case, both that album and this collection under review are still available very reasonably.
The Mozart excerpts immediately alert the listener to Grümmer’s qualities: a virginal purity that makes her Elsa so credible in Kempe’s classic Lohengrin and also in the live recording under von Matačič here, yet her Countess exudes an aura of aristocratic poise which matches and contrasts so well with Erna Berger’s more girlish Susanna in the Letter Duet. She employs portamento discreetly but never lifts effortfully into a high note; she instead hits notes head on to produce an ethereal, almost disembodied sound – and her diction, whether in Italian or German, is pellucid. Her agility in the deliberately ironic and taxing coloratura of “Come scoglio” is flawless, just as the fearful challenges of the role of Elettra in Idomeneo hold no terrors for her, as the live recording - in decent sound – demonstrates; her rendering of the first aria is rewarded with prolonged applause. And what a host of legendary, “who’s who” names among the conductors here: Furtwängler, Münchinger, Fricsay, Schüchter, Solti, Mitropoulos. No less distinguished is the list of co-performers, as per beneath this review. The sound in the Salzburg Festival Don Giovanni is less satisfactory and there is a lot of stage clumping but it is tolerable. A special treat, new to me, is her duet in K. 490 with a favourite violinist, Arthur Grumiaux. The numbers from Die Zauberflöte are charming – and the quality of the sound gives me pause for thought when I consider that they were recorded in the year of my birth and the trio of boys are probably now very elderly gentlemen or no longer with us. The spirit of Mozart’s profound fairy tale could not be more faithfully captured and made me hasten to find the complete recording – this was one I missed in my survey of the opera. The sound for all the Rosenkavalier excerpts is unfortunately a bit muddy and Erika Köth is a little thin as Sophie while Rysanek’s intonation is suspect - Grümmer herself makes a more satisfactory and musical Marschallin for Varviso in 1959.
The Lohengrin recording is one of the best in the catalogue even if ultimately I favour the Kempe studio recording for its superior sound and marginally superior cast. The sound here is not as good as the Orfeo label issue, which had access to the original Austrian radio tapes, but it will do. The Tannhäuser disc is even better because the tracks are lifted from Konwitschny’s studio recording and apart from the clarity of the sound and the excellence of cast, the central delight is the combination of incisiveness and delicacy Grümmer brings to her portrayal of Elisabeth; for a supposedly light, lyric voice she brings welcome heft to the role with laser top notes. For all that I am a devotee of Knappertsbuch, I do not think his live 1960 Die Meistersinger next on CD is his best by any means; Greindl’s clumsily sung Sachs is a trial, but extracting Grümmer’s contribution should have been a good option. Unfortunately, she starts off the famous quintet unsteadily and sounds shrill – she is simply not in best voice and the ensemble does not gel tonally. This is the weakest offering in the set by far.
CD 6 gives us four excerpts from the two great German “folk operas” Der Freischütz and Hänsel und Gretel, two from Keilberth’s studio recording of Weber’s masterpiece and two live under Furtwängler. Grümmer is partnered by two fine sopranos in Lisa Otto and Rita Streich and we hear much charming, pretty singing but nobody sings “Wie schöne Nacht” just before “Leise, leise” as angelically as she, or injects such ecstasy into “Er ist’s! Er ist’s!... All meine Pulse schlagen”. In the lovely aria “Und ob die Wolke” she has most of the time to compete with an audience member who is seeing if he can cough louder than she can sing but still floats a beautiful, soft A-flat and receives deserved applause at the end, not just for her singing but presumably for persevering. The bulk of the disc is given over to extracts from Karajan’s famous mono recording; my only reservation there is that many seasoned collectors will already own the complete set. She and Schwarzkopf make a delightful brother and sister, much freer and livelier than some pairs. I recommend this as a prime mono recording in my survey and on reacquaintance with it via this selection I find it even more enchanting.
The seventh disc presents something of a random selection and I always struggle somewhat with French and Italian operas rendered into German – not so much with Russian – but the beauty of Grümmer’s singing goes a long way to persuading me of its…tolerableness, if not suitability, perhaps – which is not something I can say for Walther Ludwig’s windy, strangulated Hofmann, contrasting comically with Grümmer’s ease. Margarethe (Gounod’s Faust) sounds fine, too, but Carmen? Just, no – especially as Rudolf Schock is no-one’s ideal Don José. Grümmer certainly has an apt voice for Micaëla, even if there is something more than a little incongruous about her exclaiming “Mein Gott!” As I said, I feel more at home with a German Lisa in the earliest recording here – and it’s of very good technical quality, too. Grümmer’s depicts Lisa’s suicidal desperation at midnight most feelingly and Jochum is an impassioned accompanist – but there is some strain on top notes. I was most intrigued to discover how Grümmer’s Desdemona would sound, as I fear I already had a fair idea what kind of figure Schock would cut as Otello. Allowing for the handicap of the translation, she in fact portrays her credibly, even if her clean lines and cool phrasing are hardly redolent of Italianate passion – or style. Let’s put it this way: on hearing Schock and Grümmer, neither Del Monaco nor Tebaldi would have lost any sleep over the security of their status as first choices for those roles – but the German pair sing the conclusion to the starlit love scene very nicely and Grümmer narrates both the Willow Song and her prayer sweetly. As singing per se, it is deeply felt and admirable and I admit that by the end of her “Ave Maria”, Grümmer’s artistry has completely overcome my resistance to the German text.
The next two discs are devoted to Lieder, opening with two short but arresting numbers from Beethoven’s incidental music for Goethe’s Egmont, new to me as I suspect they will be to many, followed by another novelty, one Karl Friedrich Zelter’s strophic setting of “Der König in Thule” from Goethe’s Faust – almost as lovely as Schubert’s much more famous version. Schubert himself then features in five songs, the second of which, “Wie anders, Gretchen”, is a dramatised exchange opening with Fischer-Dieskau over-emoting and articulating furiously before Grümmer and a chorus make brief contributions; it really is an odd bird. Four elegant Mozart songs, three conventional, unexceptionable songs by Reger, a motley collection of seven Schumann songs of higher quality from various sources and two orchestrated songs by Grieg from Peer Gynt sung in German – “Solveig’s Song” and “Solveig’s Cradle Song”, beautifully performed - make up disc 8. CD9 contains more Mozart and Schubert, then four songs by Brahms and some from Wolf’s Lieder aus dem Spanischen Liederbuch. There might be some discoveries among these; I, for instance, was unfamiliar with Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”, his longest and composed in 1787, the same year as Don Giovanni and Eine kleine Nachtmusik and very obviously anticipatory of Schubert in its peculiar quality of smiling through tears. I have never much warmed to Wolf’s or Brahms’ songs but if any singer is going to convince me of their charms, it will be Grümmer.
The final disc is of excerpts from choral works and oratorios. There might be nothing of period awareness about the tempi or trumpets in Karl Forster’s account of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung but it boasts some superb singers and exudes authority. Grümmer’s singing is a joy. We are also given a souvenir of her singing “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit” in Klemperer’s live,1956 Brahms Requiem; its long, soaring lines suit Grümmer’s voice ideally, despite a sharp entry. The bulk of the disc is given over to her solos from the two big Bach Passions. The last items are three tracks from Ferenc Fricsay’s live, mono recording of Verdi’s Requiem (mistakenly dated as 1952 here; it was a live performance from January 1951), which I praised in my survey. The bell-like ping and precision of her soprano is of course ideal in Bach and I remarked in my recent review of Warner’s The Complete Wilhelm Furtwängler on Record that “Elisabeth Grümmer was as fluty and silvery a soprano as you could wish for… its devotional intensity and constant musicality are a delight, as long as you jettison unreasonable stylistic expectations.”
This is of course a “no frills” presentation: ten carboard sleeves in a clamshell box and no booklet or texts beyond track details on the reveres of each wallet – some of which is in light brown on dark brown in miniscule point size -please, young CD designers, bear in mind that older collectors can struggle with such thoughtless choices.
Ralph Moore
Contents
CD 1: Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791) excerpts from Le nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, concert arias [71:38]
CD 2: Mozart: excerpts from Die Zauberflöte, Figaros Hochzeit, Don Giovanni; Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949) excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier [77:18]
CD 3: Richard WAGNER (1813-1883) excerpts from Lohengrin [59:42]
CD 4: Wagner: excerpts from Tannhäuser [55:08]
CD 5: Wagner: excerpts from Die Meistersinger [48:44]
CD 6: Carl Maria von WEBER (1786-1826) excerpts from Der Freischütz; Engelbert HUMPERDINCK (1854-1921) excerpts from Hänsel und Gretel [77:22]
CD 7: Arias & Songs by Ambroise THOMAS (1811-1896), Jacques OFFENBACH (1819-1880), Charles GOUNOD (1818-1893), Georges BIZET (1838-1875), Peter Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893), Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901) [67:34]
CD 8: Arias & Songs by Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827), Franz SCHUBERT (1797-1828), Max REGER (1873-1916), Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856), Edvard GRIEG (1843-1907) [63:53]
CD 9: Arias & Songs by Mozart, Schubert, Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897), Hugo WOLF (1860-1903) [70:00]
CD 10: Arias & Songs by Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809), Brahms, J.S. Bach (1685-1750) [65:15]
Other artists:
Singers:
Erna Berger, Leopold Simoneau, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Günther Ambrosius, Gottlob Frick, Ernst Kozub, Hilde Güden, Leonie Rysanek, Erika Köth, Sandor Konya, Franz Crass, Hans Hopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Rudolf Schock, Else Schürhoff, Josef Metternich, Walther Ludwig, Josef Greindl, Hertha Klust, Hugo Dietz, Hans Altmann,
Orchestras:
Berliner Philharmoniker, Berliner Symphoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Orchester der Städtische Oper Berlin, Sinfonieorchester des Nordwestdeutschen Rundfunks, Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele, Philharmonia Orchestra, RIAS Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Conductors:
Ferenc Fricsay, Wilhelm Schüchter, Karl Münchinger, Hans Zanotelli, Georg Solti, Lovro von Matacic, Franz Konwitschny, Artur Rother, Erich Leinsdorf, Hans Knappertsbusch, Rudolf Kempe, Joseph Keilberth, Herbert von Karajan, Richard Kraus, Hugo Dietz, Karl Forster, Otto Klemperer, Eugen Jochum, Wilhelm Furtwängler
