In some respects the 'fill-in' items are the most important here, so we'll start with them. The recordings from Die Aegptische Helena were made just four months after the premiere, and Fritz Busch, the conductor here, was the conductor then (a point unaccountably missing in the notes—and, incidentally, is it true that Busch's ''greatest artistic successes'' were at Glyndebourne? I would have thought his work at Dresden was at least as successful). The two orchestral excerpts are magnificently played by the Orchestra of the Berlin State Opera, and indeed they rather show up the playing of the Vienna Philharmonic in the Rosenkavalier. They are also fine as recorded sound, as are the solos so gloriously sung by Rose Pauly. The second was included in ''The Record Of Singing, Volume 3'' (EMI (LP) EX290169-3, 10/85) but it is good to have both especially as her records are so few and so rare. These and a greater rarity, the two songs accompanied by Strauss himself, were long ago issued on LP in a valuable Strauss collection on the Rococo label (nla), but to many listeners they will be new. Robert Hutt, who sang the Emperor in the Berlin premiere of Die Frau ohne Sehatten has a slightly dry, unvibrant tone but he is both fine and sensitive, and these are thoroughly sympathetic performances, well transferred.
The Rosenkavalier set will be new to few seasoned collectors: it must be one of the most famous of all early operatic recordings. Still, there is always (one hopes) a younger generation who may not have heard it, or even heard of it. Suffice it to say that in Lotte Lehmann it has the adored Marschallin of the time, and perhaps of the century, with Elisabeth Schumann scarcely less affectionately identified with her role of Sophie and Richard Mayr with his of Baron Ochs. Maria Olczewska, whose sumptuous voice (''like a great cushion'' as I once heard it described) hardly suggests the youth's maleness, was not their most regular partner as Octavian, but her name adds lustre to the cast list and was once one to conjure with. Given this array of high distinction, with the more than competent Robert Heger in charge, I feel that the results should have been better At least the trio is something to feed upon, but generally I find that I am more grateful for the memory than for the actual sound when I am listening. There are moments of delight, but on the whole the recording is not a sensuous pleasure. Perhaps EMI's more sophisticated transfer techniques could bring out the best in it: I'm afraid that Pearl's 'straight' transfer method doesn't. The surfaces, so regular in the Zauberflote transfer (see above), sometimes have a swish and sometimes other incidental blemishes, but what matters most is the indifferent quality of the voice-recording in much of it, which they have been unable to mitigate. I rather think, too, that it was a mistake to join up the sides of the 78rpm originals where there is a gap in the score: for instance, Ochs's ''Medicus'' and ''Federbett' make no sense coming straight after the Sophie/Octavian duet. It is very much a set of excerpts, probably more so than we realized in days of yore when it filled nearly a page of the old catalogue. With frank recognition of what the recording is not, there would probably come a better chance of appreciating it for what it is.'