I would not send an aspiring interpreter of Lieder to Tauber's recordings to learn style, but I would urge her or him to listen to the old master to learn about communication. Everything that is done here is full of the kind of eloquent pleading of which Tauber was master. With any number of recommendable versions of Winterreise in the modern catalogue there is still room for Tauber's singing of 12 songs from the cycle (much prized by collectors in their 78rpm form) for the easy, natural way in which he accents them, for his instinctive phrasing, and for the inner pathos he brings, for instance, to the third and final section of ''Fruhlingstraum'' each time round, unaffected but affecting in its many tonal shadings. Then there's the intended self-pitying of ''Die Krahe'', taken slower than is customary today, and the sense of power kept in reserve, heard in both ''Die Post'' and ''Der sturmische Morgen''. With his voice so perfectly placed and controlled, it would have been so easy for Tauber to have just traded on its beauty, but there is no suggestion of that here. As with his famous version of ''Am Meer'', not on this disc, ''Der Wegweiser'' has a kind of inevitable sense of inner tragedy about it, and ''Der Leiermann'' is all the better for its simplicity; an antidote to heavy-laden, modern accounts of this song. Many of these readings are very free with rubato in a way totally out of fashion today but not to be frowned on for that reason alone.
In 1927, when these songs from Winterreise were recorded, Tauber was at the absolute zenith of his vocal powers, the tone succulent and full. Even though by 1935 some of the bloom had gone, his Schumann is just as inviting. It's true that ''Der Nussbaum'' is, for Tauber, a relatively blank reading, but the rest of the songs are a delight. ''Mondnacht'' is sung in mezzo forte, not in the sustained pp often favoured today, but has a wonderful summer warmth to it (at the end the famous half-voice comes into its own, however). ''Widmung'' is at once sensuous and sensual, ''Aus den ostlichen Rosen'' irresistibly seductive.
It's back to 1926 for the famous series of German folk settings. The arrangements may be unsuitably facile, but the singing is quite ravishing in its colours. In Heidenroslein the shock of not hearing the familiar Schubert tune is overcome by Tauber's charm; listen especially for the little grace note near the end. Even more winning is the plangent feeling of Lebewohl and the smile in Frohe Botschaft, both unforgettable. Spoliansky, here and in the Schubert, is a superior pianist to Percy Kahn, Tauber's later partner and recording manager. The recordings are all wholly faithful to the originals, as is Pearl's wont.'