Andresen, the template for so many Scandinavian basses, was principal at the Berlin State Opera and Bayreuth from 1927 to 1936, also appearing at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne (Sarastro, 1935; Osmin, 1936) and the Metropolitan. In the late 1930s his career began to fade, perhaps because he had given so generously of his resources in the previous decade, and he died in poverty in Stockholm in 1940, aged only 44.
This issue recalls several of his principal roles in Wagner. His King Henry is noble and solid. As King Mark he discloses that monarch’s interior agonies in deeply felt utterance (three excerpts). His Hagen, watching and waiting, is a formidable creation. In addition to this famous Act 1 solo, we have an unpublished account of the trio at the end of Act 2 of Gotterdammerung in the company of Larsen-Todsen’s Brunnhilde (underpowered) and Janssen’s Gunther (somewhat thin in tone), all three taking parts they sang at the time (1928) at Covent Garden. Leo Blech conducts a taut performance. Andresen, superb as Hagen, cajoles the others into nefarious action against Siegfried. Finally Andresen and Pistor, Bayreuth colleagues, sing part of the Gurnemanz/Parsifal scene from Act 1, interesting but not particularly compelling as a bleeding chunk.
Much the most valuable part of this reissue is the series of song titles Andresen made for Columbia in 1929 (tracks 9-14). All six performances reveal the bass as a master of colouring words on a smaller canvas, and a deep identification with the music in hand. Most exceptional is the Loewe ballad, Der selt’ne Beter, almost worth the price of the whole issue alone. In Song on Record I (CUP: 1986), the perceptive American critic Will Crutchfield rightly described this reading as “one of utter involvement and considerable imaginative and vocal resource”. A father-prince prays for the life of his daughter. The old warrior’s plea goes unanswered and, in bitter grief, he whispers: “If God had come to me and asked a favour of mercy, I would not have been so severe.” Andresen so sympathizes with the father’s plight that one is almost moved to cry with him.
Hardly less withering in emotional terms is his account of Strauss’s Ruhe, meine Seele. In lighter mode, he pulls out all the deep bass stops in Fischer’s once-famous Im kuhlen Keller, which British basses sang as In cellar cool, and charms in the, presumably Norwegian, Swineherd’s Song. This generously filled CD is an apt commemoration of an admired singer’s art. The transfers, from seemingly intractable originals, are fair to good.'