I love the freedoms Lehmann takes. Many of them might not work for a singer not so far inside the idiom, but for her they’re just the way it “feels right.” She’ll go in direct contradiction of the score, in matters of both tempo and dynamics (e.g., she’ll do a swell-and-diminish a measure or half-measure sooner or later than where it’s marked, sometimes preparing with a little stop and dropping back to piano, entirely on her own recognizance), and it sounds like exactly what Schumann must have really meant. She takes undisguised breaths where other singers would carry over, and makes it sound like superior phrasing. (All right, not always—but often.) The consistency of this expressive rightness is all the more impressive for the presence of instrumental accompaniment. This is undeniably a drawback with many of these Lieder and salon song discs, often adding to an impression of goopy sentimentality; we feel a great relief when we come to a trio of songs from a 1928 session (Schumann’s Aufträge, Strauss’s Morgen! and Mit deinen blauen Augen) and find them well accompanied by Hermann Weigert on piano, albeit with the usual solo violin in the Strauss selections. In the Frauenliebe songs, the accompaniment is a chamber string ensemble led from the piano by Frieder Weissmann. They go right with Lehmann’s choices (so that she seems the de facto leader), and aren’t too damaging as long as she’s singing. About the intros and the cycle’s postlude, though, there’s no escaping the inferiority to Schumann’s gorgeous piano writing. We mustn’t blame these good musicians of long ago.

Among the 135 sides heard here (I’ve so far listened to some 70 or 75), many are electrical remakes of items Lehmann had recorded acoustically, and a few were included in the previous Marston collection, by way of preview. Since her vocal capabilities remained quite consistent over the entire 19-year period covered so far, showing only an incremental maturing of timbre, the tonal filling-out inherent in recording by mike as opposed to the horn (and then, more in the accompaniments than in the solo voice) is in most cases the most noticeable difference among versions. For that reason, I’ll refer readers to my remarks on the earlier set with respect to some of her most representative interpretations. Favorites of mine from the newly recorded material include two of the Wesendonck songs (Schmerzen is very good, Träume better yet—she snags you with that very first, intimate “Sag’, welch wunderbare Träume,” and never lets go); the heart-catching Werther Letter Scene (there are many well-sung versions, but for me none as powerful, despite its use of German translation, till we arrive at the somewhat unlikely person of Maria Callas); and the Richard Strauss excerpts (of Rosenkavalier, only the “Die Zeit, es ist ein wunderbar Ding” passage, but in addition the superb Ariadne monolog, with the second of the two takes the more present and confident, and two fine excerpts from Arabella, including “Er ist der Richtige” with Käthe Heidersbach, plus four of the songs). There’s also the other Strauss, including the famous recording of the Fledermaus Act 2 finale, with Richard Tauber purloining the role of Falke to inimitable effect; two Zigeneurbaron ensembles; and the “Klänge der Heimat“—though here, I can’t quite agree with Aspinall that the desperate scramble to squeeze the Frischka onto the record side is successful. By combining items from both sets, one can get a fair idea of Lehmann’s delightful Mignon, and to her Puccini items (she had great feeling for this composer’s music, original language or no) can be added two duets from Tosca with Jan Kiepura, who for all his undeniable vocal gift shows us the flip side of Lehmann’s musical liberties, whereon they slither over into self-indulgent distentions. But there’s much else, too. Acquire and explore.