You may wonder why there’s room, on the third disc of a recording of Der Rosenkavalier, for six songs from Lehmann. The reason lies in Bodanzky’s heinously arbitrary cuts then customary at the Metropolitan. Yet this issue is an essential document in that it allows us to hear Lehmann’s Marschallin live at a point in her career when she was able, at 51, still to give the lovable, warm, instinctive reading of the role familiar from the 1933 EMI excerpts, available on several reissues (Pearl, 3/90 and EMI References, 4/93). Every phrase reveals her interpretative insights and her inborn spontaneity of response, and shows her to be a complete mistress of Strauss’s conversational style, not least in her unsentimental, elegiac account of the Monologue – and how this Marschallin knows what she is talking about when she tells Octavian of Time’s demands. The voice remains as heart-warming as ever, as it does in the uniquely outgoing way she sings her Strauss Lieder with Ormandy – time seems to stand still as she sings, so movingly, ‘Traum durch die Dammerung’ and ‘Morgen’. The tone of the 60-year-old soprano seems practically untouched by time or wear: only the Schubert and Brahms items betray some frailty.
In the opera, Rise Stevens, in her debut as Octavian, is impetuous enough, but unconvincing as Mariand’l, Marita Farell a silver-voiced Sophie, Schorr – no less – a secure Faninal, but List is a self-indulgent, uninteresting Ochs. Bodanzky conducts a fast, vital account of what remains of the score. The not-so-good recording often distorts the higher voices, but Lehmann enthusiasts won’t mind all that; rather they will savour her benchmark Marschallin. At the price it’s well worth acquiring this historic document.'