From the Lotte Lehmann Archives of the Special Collections at the UCSB Library, the specialists sent me the following Lehmann recordings. They were all listed as “test pressings,” but only some of them were that. The following list (in alphabetical order) offers the recordings they sent along with my remarks.
That will be followed with the same recording but from a test pressing transferred to an acetate disc rotating at 33 1/3. These rarities were sent from the Marr Sound Archive at UMKC, courtesy of Chuck Haddix.
Everything you hear on this site is in mp3 format.
Scroll to the bottom of this page to find an exchange about test pressings between me (Gary Hickling) and a transfer and recording expert (Mark Obert-Thorn).
Andenken (Ich denke dein) (Beethoven) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia.
Auf Flügeln des Gesanges (Mendelssohn) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia.
Aufträge (Schumann) This is NOT a test pressing, but a live performance that hasn’t been identified. It isn’t the live 1941 Town Hall recording heard on Music & Arts with Paul Ulanowsky, nor is it from the 1950 appearance in Town Hall with Bruno Walter playing piano; he was also her pianist on 17 Apr 1950 in San Francisco, which was broadcast on the Standard Hour.
It could be the 15 Feb 1943 CBS radio broadcast; that included Schubert’s An die Musik and Schumann’s Aufträge; Howard Barlow, conducted an orchestra, but Aufträge was performed with piano.
Das Veilchen (Mozart) This is NOT a test pressing for the 1941 Columbia dates. It isn’t from the 10 or 30 July 1949 Recital at Emerson Junior High School, Los Angeles with pianist Bruno Walter which you can hear below.
Der Engel (Wagner) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia.
Die Trommel gerühret (Beethoven) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia.
Do not chide me written by Lehmann’s accompanist Ernö Ballogh
Gesang Weylas (Wolf) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia.
In der Fremde (Aus der Heimat…) (Schumann) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia.
Mild und Leise (Tristan und Isolde: Liebestod) (Wagner) This is NOT a test pressing, but rather from a live performance with the San Francisco Orchestra conducted by Pierre Monteux on 12 Dec 1943 for a radio broadcast for the (Chevron) Standard Hour, NBC. Though this isn’t the best performance Lehmann sang of the Liebestod, there are some fine moments.
Neue Liebe (In dem Mondenschein) (Mendelssohn) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia.
Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge (Mozart) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia, but you’ll hear the “improved” version below. Who knows what has been done to make it sound different.
Ständchen (Schubert) This is NOT a test pressing for the 1941 Columbia recording. Lehmann sang this so often, it’s difficult to know the origin of this recording.
Ständchen (Strauss) (with orchestra) This may be a test pressing for the 1938 Magic Key performance. Below, you can compare with a cleaned up version.
Traum durch die Dämmerung (Strauss) This may be a test pressing for the 1938 Magic Key performance. Below, you can compare with a better sounding cleaned up version.
Vissi d’arte (in Italian from Tosca) (Puccini) This may be a test pressing for the 1938 Magic Key performance.
Warnung (Mozart) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia, but you’ll hear the “improved” version below. Who knows what has been done to make it sound so different.
Wenn ich früh in den Garten gehe (Schumann) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia.
Wiegenlied (Brahms) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia, but you’ll hear the “improved” version below. Who knows what has been done to make it sound so different.
Wonne der Wehmut (Beethoven) This is a test pressing for the recording Lehmann and Ulanowsky made in 1941 for Columbia, but you’ll hear the “improved” version below. Who knows what has been done to make it sound so different.
Zueignung (Strauss) This may be a test pressing for the 1938 Magic Key performance.
The following recordings are from UMKC from an acetate listed as a test. Lehmann is accompanied by Ulanowsky.
MGM Test Pressings for Big City
• We have just added Lehmann’s MGM test pressings for two of her songs in the movie Big City.
An exchange between Gary Hickling and recording expert Mark Obert-Thorn on the subject of test pressings.
Dear Mark,
In the late 1990’s when Lehmann’s companion Frances Holden died, she willed the “private” collection of Lehmann recordings (probably stored in their old Santa Barbara house) to the Music Academy of the West. The president at the time, David Kuehn, knew that the Academy had no resources to deal with this wide variety of sound material. He knew Chuck Haddix, curator of the UMKC Marr Sound Archives, and arranged to send the whole collection there. I was frequently in touch with Chuck and before he left the institution he copied (sadly on cassettes!) their Lehmann holdings. I finally have time to listen to these documents and have discovered recordings titled “Test Pressing (sic) 33 1/3 Acetate”. The recordings are the LL 1941 Columbia recordings, most of which appeared on the LP “A Tribute to Lotte Lehmann in honor of her 75th birthday.”
My questions to you:
1. What was the meaning or use of test pressings? From what I’ve seen, they’re only recordings that the company has decided to publish. Is that correct?
When I was rummaging through LL’s recordings (after her death, in her Santa Barbara home), I discovered a shellac recording of Nacht und Träume, which I didn’t know Lehmann had recorded. (Now, I can’t remember if it said “Test Pressing” on the disc.) I listed to it there and it seemed fine, so when Pfeifer called me to get my suggestions for a LL CD that RCA was preparing, I suggested the Nacht und Träume, along with any other masters that RCA hadn’t published. Would there be only a master of the published version, or were metal masters also made of other takes?
2. In this case of “Test Pressing (sic) 33 1/3 Acetate”, can I assume that these were 78 rpm shellacs that were, for some reason, transferred to 33 1/3 acetates. What would have been the reason? Why on ‘acetate”? Why 33 1/3, when back then there were so few (and probably not Lehmann) who had machines which rotated at that speed? So, who were these “test pressings” for? What was their purpose?
3. The old technician who worked for Columbia (I believe, but I’ve forgotten his name), had in his possession a small disc (45rpm size, but recorded decades earlier, so shellac) that was supposed to have been the only copy of an aria recorded by Nellie Melba. His story was that she didn’t like the test recording and took her diamond ring and made four scratches so that it could not be used. Could this story be true? Wouldn’t the wax original or some other product (made before being printed) still exist?
Thank your for your help,
Gary
Dear Gary,
There are a lot of different issues you touch on here, so let me start by saying that Victor and Columbia had very different ways of making master recordings. Victor would record directly onto 10-inch or 12-inch wax masters. These would be “positive” recordings that could be played back, although playing back a wax master would ruin it. The wax masters were then plated, and used to grow stampers from which pressings could be made. As far as I know, all takes would be plated and pressed into test pressings from which the artist could choose which take would be issued. So, a Victor test pressing would not necessarily be a take that was issued, or even a take that was chosen for issue that remained unpublished (like “Nacht und Träume”, which I transferred from a vinyl test pressing for Romophone).
American Columbia, at least from 1939 until the introduction of tape mastering a decade later, had a different process. Takes were recorded on 16-inch 33 1/3 rpm lacquer master discs. Up to six takes could be recorded on a single disc, and sometimes the tracks for more than one selection were on the same disc. From these 16-inch discs, 78 rpm masters were dubbed for release. Since they were all dubbings, their sound was inherently compromised from the beginning when they were released on shellac 78s. That’s why American Columbia pressings from the 1940s sound so bad relative to Victor pressings. When the LP era came along, however, Columbia had an advantage. The original 16-inch lacquers captured a wider frequency range and (usually) less surface noise than what Victor was able to record during the same period; and Columbia used these quieter, wider-frequency range takes as the basis for what they edited on tape as their LP masters. If you’ve heard some of the recent big box sets that Sony has put out of Ormandy, Walter, Szell, Mitropoulos, Rodzinski, Szigeti and others, that’s why their 1940s recordings sound like early ’50s tape recordings. They’ve gone back to the 16-inch lacquer masters for their transfers.
So, getting back to your “Test Pressing 33 1/3 acetate”, you didn’t mention the size of the disc (10-inch, 12-inch, 16-inch). If it’s 16-inch, it could be the actual, first-generation master. But if it’s smaller than that, it is probably a dub from that master onto another disc also playing at 33 1/3 rpm. (And we don’t know when this 33 1/3 rpm test pressing was cut. It could have been in the early ’60s, when the 75th birthday album was being put together.) Again, just like Victor, Columbia would have a number of different takes to draw upon on their original 16-inch disc masters, some issued and some unissued. And, like Victor, the purpose was to provide a disc to audition for whoever had to choose the takes to be issued (in this case, LL herself).
Finally, regarding the Melba story, I would take that with a grain of salt. Seven-inch 78 rpm shellacs were made mainly in the 1890s and very early 1900s. As far as I know, Melba never recorded anything other than 10-inch or 12-inch discs. Ruining a test pressing by scratching it might insure that no one could play that test pressing again (or at least without a lot of ticks!), but the master would still survive somewhere. She would have had to order that the master for that take also be destroyed. (Rachmaninoff was famous for doing this. He was very picky about which takes were issued. For the ones rejected, he not only ordered Victor to destroy the masters, but he also had his secretary take a hammer and smash his test pressings of the offending takes, to ensure no one would ever hear them.)
I hope that sheds some light on your questions.
Sincerely,
Mark Obert-Thorn