Recommended CDs

Wagner's Die Walküre Act 1; EMI CDH 7 61020 2 and recently Act 1 & 2 on Naxos: 8.110250-51 On their site you can hear many excerpts from the recording.

Some have called it the most important recording of the twentiety century: Lehmann in her prime in 1935 as Sieglinde, Lauritz Melchior as Siegmund and Bruno Walter conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. There’s no translation included with the EMI CD. It is important to understand the way Lehmann delivers the words and if your German isn’t good, try to find a translation.

Lehmann's work in the second act with the same artistic team, is also a great display of her histrionic talents. EMI CDH 7 64255 2. A portion of this is also available on one of the "Met Centenarians" series (MET 703). It contains the standard arias found on various LPs and CDs, but also has a portion of Act II of Die Walküre, "Hinweg! Hinweg!" in the justly famous studio recording with Melchior.

In Gramophone, May 1992: EMI Reference CDH7 64255 2 of Act 2 of Die Walküre largely recorded in 1935. Their reviewer writes that "Lehmann's identification with Sieglinde's terror and inner torment have to this day never quite been equaled." A live recording of Act 2 is available on three labels.

Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier (Abridged); EMI CHS 7 64487 2 and on Naxos 8.110191-92 (One may hear many excerpts on the Naxos site.)

Lehmann sings the role of the Marshallin with insight and flare; her portions have been digitally well transferred. Elisabeth Schumann as Sofie can sound shrill on this CD, I don’t understand the inconsistancy. Other members of the stellar cast include Maria Olszewska as a dark voiced Octavian and Richard Mayr as a believably boorish Baron Ochs. Robert Heger leads the Vienna Philharmonic in this 1933 recording. No texts or translations and they would certainly make the acting effects of Lehmann and Mayr come alive for those who don’t understand German. I will definitely include translations of this important recording on this site. Schumann and Lehmann also sing Strauss Lieder to fill the second CD.

Also available on AB 78794/95 with Don Quixote by Strauss, conducted by Beecham as the filler. Not heard by this writer.

Live performances are available on Naxos 8.110034/6 from January 1939 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. The filler is a Lehmann song recital. See "Reviews" in the News for a review.

Another live performance: Lys 326-327 from a February 1938 Metropolitan Opera performance. See "Reviews" in the News for a review.

Lotte Lehmann Opera Arias; EMI CDH 7 61042 2

Good transfers of arias from many of Lehmann’s most important roles can be found here. No texts or translations, but sometimes one can understand the meaning by Lehmann’s singing-acting. In the “Komm, O Hoffnung” aria from Beethoven’s Fidelio, when she sings: “die Liebe wird’s erreichen” it’s obvious that love will help her reach her goal...of freeing her imprisoned husband. Other highlights from this set include her justly famous “Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. There is really ecstacy in her voice throughout the aria and it’s good to hear her in a role that she never attempted on stage. Many of Lehmann’s other famous roles are represented on this CD: Der Rosenkavalier’s Marschallin, Elsa and Elisabeth in Wagner’s Lohengrin and Tannhäuser, the frivolous Czardas from Johann Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus and a technically and dramatically skilled “Wie nahte mir der Schlummer” from Weber’s Der Frieschütz. Lehmann’s vital singing in an aria from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt is marred at the end by the only example of a Lehmann pitch problem that I know of.

Lehmann's vibrant performance of "Komm, O Hoffnung" from Beethoven's Fidelio can also be found on the Nimbus CD NI 7802 called "Divas 1906-1935." The "Digital Ambisonic" process is used and provides a bit more natural concert hall acoustic to the recording. Lehmann's voice sounds a trace brighter, but the difference between this and the EMI CD version of the Fidelio aria isn't overwhelming.

Lotte Lehmann: The Complete 1941 Radio Recital Cycle; Eklipse EKR CD18

Good sound on two CDs, Lehmann introducing a broad range of songs herself and excellent singing make up for no texts or translations. Contact the Lehmann Archive at the University of California, Santa Barbara to purchase the original LP set. Even if you can’t play the LPs, you’ll have a good booklet of all the songs in both German and English. All the major German song composers are here: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Strauss and even Wagner. There’s a bonus: Lehmann closes the series of broadcasts on Christmas eve with a program of deeply felt carols. Remember that only weeks before, the US had finally entered World War II. It was already remarkable that Lehmann had been broadcast singing so much German repertoire, it was inevitable that she wouldn’t be allowed to continue.

Lotte Lehmann: Schubert, Wolf, Duparc, Brahms; BMG 7809-2-RG (part of the RCA Victor Vocal Series and also available on cassette)

The heading can hardly do justice to the number of composers represented on this one CD. Lehmann sings an Italian cradle song, three songs by Renaldo Hahn, songs in English, as well as the expected gems of the German Lieder tradition. Many previously unreleased recordings are available and though some of them show the short-breathed Lehmann in 1949 (when she was already 61 years old!) the interpretations are always so compelling that technical considerations become insignificant

Lotte Lehmann: Schubert; Dante LYS 231-234

All of Lehmann’s known Schubert recordings, whether in the studio, broadcast or live, are combined here for the first time. The complete Winterreise, Die schöne Müllerin, and miscelaneous songs (some with embarrassing café orchestra accompaniments from the ‘20s) show Lehmann’s devotion and deep connection to Schubert’s Lieder. No texts or translations in an otherwise stunning presentation with photos, an essay and little cardboard covers with a different Lehmann photo for each of the four CDs. One error: the 1947 recording of Schubert’s "An den Mond" is not to Goethe’s poetry, but rather the one which begins "Geuss, lieber Mond" by Hölty. The transfers are almost hiss-free, and the voice doesn’t sound constricted.

If you want only Lehmann's Die schöne Müllerin, it is available on Vocal Archives: VA 1195.

For those who want to hear only Winterreise, I recommend the Pearl CD: GEM 0033 version. The sound is excellent. Another Winterreise with acceptable sonics is available on Vocal Archives: VA 1173

Regarding the Pearl CD release Alan Blyth writes: "There are several astonishing features about this remarkable performance. In Lehmann's time Winterreise was considered an almost exclusively male preserve; even today it is seldom given by women. Elena Gerhardt was the first to challenge that preserve. Then came Lehmann, who first performed Schubert's cycle in public on an appropriately icy New York night, 1 February 1941. Then, Lehmann didn't record the cycle in one group of sessions or, indeed, in the written order of the songs. Moreover she recorded about half of it for Victor, half for American Columbia, surely a unique event in the history of recording! So it never appeared in its complete form at the time it was committed to disc. And that first public performance took place after the Victor recording of the first eleven songs, amazingly recorded on one day (26 February 1940) but before the remainder of the songs were done for Columbia in March 1941.

By the time that Lehmann came to this Everest among cycles of Lieder, she had absorbed, performed and recorded a vast number of pieces in the genre. Experienced in every facet of song interpretation, as evinced by her books on the subject, she arrived at last, in her early 50s, at Winterreise, and lavished all the concentrated intensity she had brought to all her stage roles.

There is something about any and every Lehmann recording that provokes a gut reaction: this artist is peering into the very depths of her being and communicating with the depths of ours as she relives the music in hand. So it is with this most penetrating of Schubert's works for the solo voice. As a concomitant to that, she sings this masterpiece as she sang every other, as though she were creating it at that moment, which is another way of saying that her art and her style were wholly individual: nobody before or since, except perhaps Brigitte Fassbaender who also undertook this cycle towards the end of her career, has uttered it with such a telling immediacy of impact.

These facets of her singing were obvious to one critic at that first performance of Lehmann's. He wrote: "Each song came fresh and spontaneously to the audience. The shades of melancholy, nostalgia, anguish, bitterness and resignation passed in review and the listeners were drawn with the singer through the gamet of the poet's emotions...It was very near perfection".

It is extraordinary, given that, as we have noted, Lehmann recorded the cycle at two different times and didn't commit the songs to disc in their published order, that the reading preserves such a unity of concept and such a consistency of feeling. As Hillary Finch commented in "Song on Record I: Lieder" (CUP 1986), Lehmann's interpretation is "in a bold, entirely convincing grand romantic style. Here is the heroic, even Byronic protagonist starting out with fierce determination...Lehmann captures, as few singers after her do, a rare volatility of mood within a sweeping, overall momentum".

This is not a version for the faint-hearted, nor for those who want to hear the stylistic ["performance practice"] verities observed. Lehmann indulges in frequent ritenuti and portamenti as was the practice in her day, frowned on now. Nobody can know exactly how Schubert wanted to hear his cycle sung: surely he would have preferred an artist such as Lehmann who sings entirely from the heart and empathises wholly with the protagonist, above all, one who lives every word, to one who is merely conforming to the done thing.

How is this acheived in detail? In the third song, Gefrorner Tränen, the final outburst of inner rage "Des ganzes Winters Eis", receives a terrifying frisson through Lehmann's verbal emphasis. Then what desperation is expressed in the following song, Erstarrung, at the phrase "Ihr Bild dahin", the image of the beloved so haunting the forlorn traveller. The whole of Wasserflut tells of that intensity of feeling which pervades the whole interpretation.

The seventh song, Auf dem Flusse is notable for Lehmann's big, operatic scale of singing: this is a drama enacted well outside the confines of the recital room or studio and played out in the singer's and the listener's mind. A huge portamento on the single word "Scheidegruss" epitomises this approach. In Rückblick, a fierce journey is adumbrated: once more memory of the loved one provokes a special response from Lehmann as she uses an especially plaintive tone on the phrase "Und, ach, zwei Mädchen Augen glühten". Then the transe-like start to Rast suggests a figure too tired to carry on with the journey. There is fine support here, as throughout, from Lehmann's regular pianist at this time, Paul Ulanowsky. Then at "Und du, mein Herz" and in the closing phrases Lehmann---and Schubert, through the repetition in the text---stabs at the heart.

In that great song, Frühlingstraum, Lehmann creates the immediacy of the past and present, smiling in tone at the start, urgent, even peremtory in the middle part of each verse, then ineffably sad in the final, piercing section, beginning "der Blumen in Winter sah" and, second time around, "Wann grünt ihr Blätter am Fenster". The sheer torment of the loneliness of the twelfth song is hard to bear in such a spare, immediate reading with the last phrase "So eland nicht" the abrupt climax it should be. Finch rightly remarks on the "grasping, tugging lilt" of the Die Post, with Lehmann's variety of expression and urgent delivery creating a vital impression. In Der greise Kopf, one of the most inspired song in the whole cycle, Lehmann touches on the muffled horror of the far-off balm of death at "Wie weit noch bis zum Bahre". Die Krähe, with the vision of the hovering crow above, is taken more slowly than I have every heard it in an experience of more than fifty readings. Lehmann justifies this tardy tempo by making the song sound more concentrated and scary than it usually is, with the cry "Treue bis zum Grabe" frightening at the end, where Lehmann increases the vibrancy in her tone, and Ulanowsky's luminous playing is just right.

Letzte Hoffnung sounds lived in, the cries starting "Wein, Wein" coming from the soul of the singer. The dogs are very much present in Im Dorfe. The singer lightens her tone at "Je nun", as she speaks of the villagers' trouble-free sleep, and then employs the warmth of her lower register to startling effect at "Ich bin zu Ende mit alle Träume". Der stürmische Morgen is taken in one broad stroke of her vocal brush. Similarly in der Weg Weiser, the repeated "Ohne Ruh" has the Lehmann trademark of absolute sincerity while the closing of this amazing song is truly mesmeric. That puzzling penultimate song Die Nebensonne is conceived as a properly strange reverie by Lehmann leading to the inevitability of Der Leiermann, the defeated and worn-out traveller reduced to following this equally lonely organ-grinder. Lehmann has taken us on a searing journey, one that goes to the psychological heart of the matter". So writes Alan Blythe.

Further Lehmann CDs of high quality and interesting content:

"Met Centenarians" (MET 703).

As mentioned above, this contains the standard arias found on various LPs and CDs, but also has a portion of Act II of Die Walküre, "Hinweg! Hinweg!" in the justly famous studio recording with Melchior. The rarities of song literature on this CD justify ordering this one immediately. Good transfers of songs found only on 78s or rare, long out-of-print LPs include May's pop-sounding "Der Duft, der eine schone Frau begleitet;" Schumann's lighthearted "Die Kartenlegerin;" and Marx's super-romantic "Selige Nacht." Lehmann brings the full force of sentiment and joy to each of these. The booklet includes an accurate bio, discographical data, and notes about the songs and translations.

Strauss' "Ständchen" on "Sunday Night Concert at the Met."

Another Lehmann performance in the Met series Is Strauss' "Ständchen" on "Sunday Night Concert at the Met." Available in both CD (MET 207CD) and cassette format. Met phone is 1-800-892-2525.

"Komm, O Hoffnung" from Beethoven's Fidelio

Lehmann's vibrant performance of "Komm, O Hoffnung" from Beethoven's Fidelio can be found on the Nimbus CD NI 7802 called "Divas 1906-1935." The "Digital Ambisonic" process is used and provides a bit more natural concert hall acoustic to the recording. Lehmann's voice sounds a trace brighter, but the difference between this and the EMI CD version of the Fidelio aria isn't overwhelming.

Innaurato writes of several Lehmann CDs

The August 1990 Opera News included an article by Albert Innaurato in which he wrote "RCA... provides a fine Lotte Lehmann collection that included some rare or unreleased performances, most from late in her career. (78092RG). EMI has a Lehmann disc with mostly expected arias in good transfers (CDH7-61042-2), but for a really thrilling collection, look to the two Pearl issues (GEMM CD9409 and 9410). On the first, we have an intense account of the Berceuse from Jocelyn, the Tosca duets in Italian with Jan Kiepura, and the Fledermaus and Zigeunerbaron records, including the Act II finales, both with Tauber. There are also songs—by Jensen, Eulenberg and Werner... charming in themselves, sung with unforgettable joy and tenderness. On the second CD are three of Lehmann's best records from this period: 'Elle a fui' from Hoffman, Maddalena's narrative from Andrea Chenier, and 'Psyche Wandelt' from D'Albert's Die Toten Augen, a three dimensional exhibition of sex in sound."

Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben by Schumann

Justifiably called a classic recording, Lehmann's interpretation of Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben by Schumann with Bruno Walter at the piano, are benchmarks for these works. Available on various lables, look for CBS MPK 44840 (in Europe) or more generally: Vocal Archives VA 1158 .

Lehmann sings Viennese songs with Paul Ulanowsky

In a pairing with Bruno Walter conducting Strauss Waltzes, Lehmann sings Viennese songs with Paul Ulanowsky, piano. These songs have much charm and the CD includes light French songs and Mendelssohn's "Auf Flüglen des Gesanges" (On Wings of Song) as well. Sony MPK 47682