The Beginning of a Legend, and: Recital 1 (review)

EMI Classics passed up the chance to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Instead of another official retrospective from the EMI archives, other labels have stepped into the breach to document the early years of Schwarzkopf's career. The Istituto Discografico Italiano has issued a two-CD set featuring live and studio recordings made between 1938 and 1954. Golden Melodram has compiled a single CD of fifteen selections recorded between 1941 and 1952. Other labels have also taken advantage of the European copyright law that frees commercial recordings after fifty years. Hänssler Classics combines four operetta potpourris Schwarzkopf recorded with tenor Rupert Glawitsch in 1939 and 1940 with excerpts from EMI's recordings of Lehár's Die lustige Witwe and Das Land des Lächelns in its Living Voices series (94.501). Andromeda's three-CD A Tribute combines EMI commercial recordings dating from 1946 to 1954 with a 1954 recital with Hans Rosbaud from the Aix-en-Provence Festival (andrcd 5006). On a single CD, Preiser collects the Mozart arias Schwarzkopf recorded for EMI between 1946 and 1952 (93444).

The Preiser disc—ordered chronologically, meticulously documented, and superbly transferred—sets a standard not matched in the other releases. The two-disc IDIS set is a hodgepodge of mismatched recordings, erroneously dated and sloppily edited. Melodram continues its disordered release of live Schwarzkopf selections with a disc that focuses on prime material—the 1952 Hamburg broadcast with the NDR Orchestra that features the soprano in a collection of material she did not re-record. Alas, these items are scattered haphazardly throughout the disc among selections from Vienna, Salzburg, Berlin, Turin, and Milan. The tracks shift in date and sound quality.

Despite the lapses, these recordings capture Schwarzkopf at the outset of her career and document her vocal prime. They show her fresh, pure-toned lyric soprano before it acquired expressive depth and lost some of its luster. And these discs also show how she refined her voice and acquired the technical security that enabled her to master a broad swath of the operatic, symphonic, and song literature. Schwarzkopf was blessed with more than a distinctive voice and the keen musicianship and discipline required to make a major career. She was also lucky to emerge at a time when radio broadcasts could document her career from its start.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: The Beginning of a Legend opens with one of the most astonishing excerpts on these CD compilations. Schwarzkopf made her stage debut as a Flower Maiden at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin on 15 April 1938. She then sang Wellgunde in both Rheingold and Götterdämmerung and Ida in Fledermaus, along with many other minor roles. On 1 November, two days after singing the First Page in Lohengrin, she was summoned to the studio of the Berlin Reichsender to replace the soprano scheduled to sing the title role in a broadcast of Verdi's Alzira. Without any rehearsal, she sight-read the challenging part. The broadcast was issued by Myto on a single CD in 1996. IDIS includes the first-act duet for Alzira and Zamoro (Rupert Glawitsch). Thanks to her keen musicianship, Schwarzkopf gives an assured and confident account of this demanding music. The eager attack, the shining tone, and the vivacious personality all reveal a major musical talent.

The Alzira excerpt may document Schwarzkopf's innate musical talent, but her bright, unvaried soprano sounds rather anonymous. The transformation came after she began studying with Maria Ivogün in 1941. Before that, Schwarzkopf was singing on talent more than technique. Ivogün identified the finest tone in Schwarzkopf's voice and then, note by note, created the shining, silvery sound that can be heard in two excerpts from Weber's Abu Hassan, taped on 18 and 19 December 1944 (not 1945, as IDIS claims) in Berlin. For the first time, we can hear the distinctive tone and ingratiating timbre that ensured Schwarzkopf a place in major opera houses. In the second excerpt from Weber's opera—"Hier...