Paul Schoeffler's career bestraddled the war years. Indeed, he was probably at the peak of his form during the conflict, as his Sachs in the 1943 Bayreuth Die Meistersinger that I recently reviewed in these pages (Preiser, 2/94) would indicate. Of course, he repeated that role, his best, in the complete Decca set of the early 1950s (10/94) when his interpretation was almost as compelling. The accounts of the monologues here, which came in between, are, naturally enough, not quite so involving out of context, yet it is always good to hear again the Act 2 duet with Eva, particularly when that part is sung by Reining. He recorded Wotan's Farewell three times. This, the first of his Decca versions, is not as convincing as the second under Moralt (4/51—nla), but it is a fair representation of his fatherly rather than god-like portrayal.
These and the remaining items all come from Schoeffler's Decca 78s, made in the late 1940s. The Otello solos prefigure his appearance as Iago in 1951 (with Furtwangler at the Salzburg Festival); they are sung well, and intelligently, but want for Italianate tang in the tone. The Lieder items are, I believe, rarities I have never seen them in their 78rpm form. They evince Schoeffler's sense of line and unexaggerated diction and expression, although they are marred by a sometimes wayward sense of pitch and a stolid approach to rhythm. Brahms's Feldeinsamkeit is the worst sufferer from indeterminate intonation, yet it is hard to gainsay the Innigkeit the bass-baritone brings to his singing there and even more in Brahms's Wie bist du, meine Konigin. The transfers are excellent, but as ever from this source, support material is wholly inadequate—merely a note in German.'