Seldom out of the catalogue this famous set was recorded
in less than a week. It preserves the performances of three principals
who sang roles less than three months after the work’s 1911 premiere
– Lehmann, Schumann and Mayr (indeed Strauss had earmarked Mayr for
the premiere itself, a thwarted ambition). The recording is an abridgement
of course – it includes about half the score - or as it was styled at
the time with contemporary elegance, Selected Passages.
Lehmann was the greatest of the pre-War Marschallins
and in her mid forties when she committed the role to disc in 1933.
Her lyric soprano had sustained twenty-five years of use since her debut
and early career in Hamburg but there is little evidence of obvious
wear or frailties. Maybe the voice tends to lie low sometimes but the
compensations are legion, in an impersonation strong on knowing but
not arch superiority, not least her insouciance with Ochs and her contained
sentiment with Olszewska’s Octavian. Other Lehmann performances do survive
- Naxos 8.110034-36 preserves a 1939 live Met broadcast and others are
known to exist. Olszewska, Bavarian born and Lehmann’s junior by only
four years, was a famous Octavian who alternated the part with Delia
Reinhardt at Covent Garden and at Vienna. A noted Fricka and Erda her
resonant and dark voice was ideally suited to the role as were her quicksilver
and impulsive theatrical abilities. Elisabeth Schumann, Lotte Lehmann’s
almost exact contemporary, had extensive experience as a Mozartian -
Zerlina, Susanna – and this held her in superb stead for Sophie with
a voice of glorious purity. Mayr’s portrayal has rather divided opinion
over the years. The oldest of the cast’s principals he was fifty-six
when the recording came to be made, had sung in the premiere of Strauss’s
Die Frau ohne Schatten, and had spent the 1920s cementing his international
reputation - first at Covent Garden (as Ochs) in 1924 followed three
years later by the first of his four seasons at the Met. His is a blisteringly
characterful Ochs and the voice, very slightly frayed, is always put
to the service of characterisation and nuance – this is no mere buffo
role. Few of the other cast members have much to do and Heger steers
Orchestra and Chorus with elegance and surety; carping at his conducting,
as has sometimes happened, seems to me misplaced. Doubtless it would
have been of great value to have had Bruno Walter but Heger was a determined
and eventful musician – and composer – on his own terms and it’s good
to hear him.
The discs are supplemented by some remarkable performances
from the 1920s. Amongst the highlights are Tauber who is slightly weak
in the Italian Singer’s aria, an acoustic from 1920 whilst Supervia
is certainly full of character and energy in her duet with Ines Maria
Ferraris – I wouldn’t go so far as to say idiomatic, more idiosyncratic
perhaps. Mayr returns, four years earlier than the HMV abridged set,
for a duet with the delightful Anni Andrassy conducted by Walter (Da
lieg’ ich!… ) He is in even better voice in 1929 and a consummate performer.
Barbara Kemp makes a fine showing in her appearances from 1927 and from
the recorded performance at the Theater Unter der Linden in Berlin in
1928. Lotte Lehmann returns briefly in an excerpt (Oh sei Er gut, Quinquin…)
recorded under Manfred Gurlitt in Berlin in 1927. A very pleasant pendant
to a much-loved, irreplaceable Rosenkavalier.
Jonathan Woolf
Robert Heger