by Gary Hickling
I wrote this for the 1988 Lotte Lehmann Centennial held at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The intervening years have altered some of my thoughts, but there is still plenty of useful information in these pages. Here are some of the most important changes that have occurred: I wrote about the ugly sounds that were recorded of the high C in Der Erste, der Lieb’ mich gelehrt” from Der tode Stadt. For some unknown reason, of the two takes that Lehmann recorded, the poor one was released. You can now hear a beautiful rendition of the same aria in the Marston set of electrics. Here are observations that I didn’t mention in 1988: it is fascinating to read Lehmann’s discography. There you can notice how often she recorded a whole afternoon of songs or arias with few second takes. And there were sometimes an amazing number of recordings on one such session. Below, in the original article, I mention the limits of the 1933 Rosenkavalier but thankfully, the sound has been improved by Pristine Classical. That company has also helped the already good quality of the Walküre first act recording. Their work on Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben is equally impressive. And, though not mentioned in the original overview below, the live 1939 Rosenkavalier has also been improved in the set by Immortal Performances. It now seems almost quaint that I imagined the RCA and Columbia Winterreise excerpts being combined, because there now have been multiple CD issues of that amalgam: Pearl, Romophone, Dante Lys, and Naxos (missing Frühlingstraum). Even the LPs of Lehmann 1941 radio series have been transferred to CD: Eklipse Records, Archipel Records, VAI Audio (without spoken introductions). In the 1988 article I briefly mention Lehmann’s historic performance of An die ferne Geliebte that is now available, along with a lot of other live mostly radio programs on the CD set from Music & Arts. Finally, and with pride, I direct you to a huge number of Lehmann’s master classes available without charge in three volumes of my iBook series, Lotte Lehmann & Her Legacy.
Click the images below to enlarge.
