Interest, as distinct from approval, began at track 11. This is the Otello excerpt, the first piece of Italian opera in the collection; and, more remarkably, awareness of a creative artist, as distinct from a good singer, continued to grip from this point onwards. Up till then, Volker, widely considered the best German lyric-heroic tenor of the 1930s, had been singing his Mozart, Weber, Beethoven and Wagner with an excellence of tone and production which we in the present (who for well over a decade have hardly known where to look for a Tannhauser) are in no position to disparage as having something less than the thorough engagement of imagination and individuality we would ideally like. Volker's own Tannhauser, sampled here in the Rome Narrative, is fine in tone, clarity, accuracy and so forth, but the agony of disappointment, the bitterness of rejection, in short the additional qualities present in Melchior's recordings of that solo (on Pearl, 7/92 for example), are absent. In just the same way, he is a Tamino, Florestan, Max and Siegmund such as any of us would be happy to applaud in a present-day performance, but his recordings rarely catch the living experience of the character or bring the music to a new, imaginative life. From the Otello onwards it is different.
Judging from the Otello and Pagliacci excerpts, it would seem that in Italian opera Volker found a liberation. Yet, interestingly, in these two instances, it is a Germanic version of Italian opera that emerges, and not simply on account of language. Canio's ''Sperai, tanto il delirio accecato m'avevo'', like Otello's ''Ora e per sempre addio'', here brings something of a defiant swagger in the face of adversity. Both are fine, distinctive performances. So are the solos from Dalibor and Tiefland which follow, far more sharply characterized than the standard German repertoire heard in the first half of the programme. Transfers are splendidly clear and natural, and there is an informative biographical note.'