This volume of the Vienna archive recordings celebrates the art of Svanholm, the Swedish singer who shared Heldentenor roles with Ralf and Lorenz at the State Opera from 1938 to 1943, and was obviously a valued, stalwart member of the ensemble. More generous of tone than his Swedish compatriot Ralf, less effusive than Lorenz, he sang with consistent musicality in a voice hard to describe – plaintive, reedy yet with a heroic tang to it. After the war, when I heard him at Covent Garden, he was nothing like as reliable as he is here: heavy duties at the State Opera had taken their toll. And one can readily hear why, for on these two CDs he is heard as Achilles in extracts from a laborious account of Wagner’s recension of Iphigenie en Aulide (sung in German), Tannhauser, Siegmund and Siegfried (in the same Ring cycle in June 1941), Stolzing, Erik and Max; quite a repertory.
He fulfils almost all the taxing demands of these roles, but he is in freer, most easy voice, as Tannhauser, Siegfried and Stolzing – his account of Stolzing’s Trial and Prize songs, in a January 1943 Die Meistersinger under Bohm, is a particularly attractive assumption, and Tannhauser’s Rome Narration is sung with appropriate anguish and bitterness. Sometimes the tone becomes intractable and he forces a trifle, but by and large these are excellent performances, an appropriate souvenir of Svanholm’s otherwise under-recorded art, and the sound is above the usual standard of these Vienna sets.
Among those of his partners who should be mentioned are Konetzni as an ever eager Sieglinde, Reining as Eva, leading the Die Meistersinger Quintet gloriously, a moment of flatness at the start apart, and Nemeth, caught interestingly much later than on her famous 78s, as an exciting Senta in Der fliegende Hollander, extracts from which also include Berglund’s rather wooden Dutchman. The mezzo Piroska Tutsek, Hungarian like Nemeth, is caught all too briefly as Venus – she must have been an exciting performer.
There are substantial excerpts from two performances of a new production of Dalibor (in German, of course) from 1942, featuring Konetzni as a warm Mlada, especially moving in her death scene, and the stentorian-voiced Todor Mazaroff in the title-role, raising the rafters in a Roswaenge-like manner. This recording of an operatic event is history in sound at its most important. Ludwig is the reasonably vital conductor here. In The Ring extracts one notes once more the epic calibre of Knappertsbusch’s interpretation.'