The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I recently picked up this very fine record. Operatic sopranos are not for everyone, but some of us love this music. Originally recorded by Odeon in Germany in December of 1927, this copy is a Columbia Viva-Tonal release showing the same matrix numbers in the runoff. I always thought of her as a Strauss and Wagner singer, but in these recordings she sings two Schubert songs using her obviously fine technique and a very lyric sound. She would have been 39 when the recordings were made which would put her in her peak years as a soprano classical singer.

[youtubehd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1HCkr4XWIk[/youtubehd]
https://youtu.be/x1HCkr4XWIk

[youtubehd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7IybXTvZFM[/youtubehd]
https://youtu.be/f7IybXTvZFM

My collection may be atypical, but I have her in quite a lot of Schubert and Brahms but, out of 94 titles involving her in my catalogue, only 3 by Strauss and 9 by Wagner. (Mind you, neither is one of my favorite composers, which may have something to do with it!)

drh wrote:My collection may be atypical, but I have her in quite a lot of Schubert and Brahms but, out of 94 titles involving her in my catalogue, only 3 by Strauss and 9 by Wagner. (Mind you, neither is one of my favorite composers, which may have something to do with it!)

Obviously she was successful at both singing lieder and opera. She made around 500 recordings, so it would cover a lot of both. Her successes at both Strauss and Wagner on the opera stage was really something and many consider her versions of many opera arias the definitive versions. A very popular singer during her career and we are lucky she made so many good quality recordings.

I have a couple of albums of her Schubert recordings. I'll have to check when they were originally recorded.

Bill

I grab anything by Lehmann that I come across - even a record (lp) made late in her life, where she just reads the texts of several Lieder and some monologues from Rosenkavalier. She had one of those "magic" voices that just take hold of you (or at least me!), like Pinza, Caruso and Bjoerling, eachn in different ways. Leonard Warren in Verdi, and early Fischer-Dieskau also.

Lehamnn's Vienese songs ("Heut ist der schoenste Tag," etc.) are a total delight" voice, sense of line...

I've got Columbia #MM 615, "die Schöne Müllerin"; #M 587 and #MM 466, "Songs from 'die Winterreise' "; also #M 539, Schumann's "Frauenliebe und Leben".

These came from my folks' estate: my mother had a youthful ambition to be a singer, and was very fond of Lieder.

Bill

Many thanks, Dan, for these deeply moving performances! It may be of interest to compare Lehmann's An die Musik with a still earlier (1911) recording by Elena Gerhardt, accompanied by the great conductor Arthur Nikisch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KftfpeISbIw

Gerhardt too is very free with the tempi, but to me her version does not quite match the intense personal involvement projected by Lehmann, possibly because the words are less clear.

I have somewhere heard an extract from a broadcast recital given by Lehmann late in her career, in which she sang this same song but fell silent after the last repetition of the words 'Du holde Kunst', so that the accompanist had to finish the song alone, without the final words 'Ich danke dir'. My impression was that that this was not a case of vocal problems, but rather that the singer was herself so moved by the poet's thought – so appropriate to her lifetime's work – as well as by Schubert's setting that she could not utter the words.

Oliver Mundy.

Oliver, I quite agree with your comments on the two recordings. Both very moving but I think Lehmann captures the magic of the song better. I recently listened to a number of YouTube recordings of An die Musik by singers from the mid-20th century to more recent days and in all but one of these (Kathleen Ferrier) take the tempo too fast to emphasize the text and emotional devotion to music it provides. Even many great singers just jump right over the emotion of the piece. I think Lehmann nails it. I am very happy to have found this recording.