Gender Bender

David Patrick Stearns. Classical Pulse!; February 1998.

“Lehmann recorded Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin, an even more gender-specific cycle, in commercial recordings made in the early 1940’s but--to my knowledge--not transferered out of their orignal 78 rpm format until now. [He hasn’t visited this Web Site to look up these performances, which have been transferred to LPs]. That seems odd, considering Lehmann’s enduring, posthumous popularity. The strongest of the two is Die Schöne Müllerin, which has a greater narrative range with its hairpin emotional turns that more fully tap Lehmann’s keen theatrical instincts. However, her Winterreise is not to be sloughed off. At every turn, Lehmann sings the words with great dramatic specificity with a genuine sense of confiding in the listener that handily transends gender. In many ways, she was the Wilhelm Furtwängler of lieder, free with her tempos, adding all manner of musical variety to the straighforward strophic songs and tarrying long enough to make big dramatic points a lot bigger. Though other discs in this four-disc set have their ups and downs--the 1951 farewell recital suggests that it really was time for her to stop--the two cycles are required listening, and this pricey set is the only one on which they’re available. Sorry.” [The Winterreise is available also alone on Vocal Archives: VA 1173].