Search - Hotter, Moore :: Hans Hotter: Early Emi Recordings

A great voice in perfect health.

John Austin | Kangaroo Ground, Australia | 09/17/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Collectors of great voices are wise to keep an eye on the Testament catalogue. Their issues derive from EMI originals, a company that generally followed the policy, "Get the best artists and provide them with the best recording techniques". EMI's eminent producer Walter Legge spotted the Bavarian bass baritone Hans Hotter, when he went to Vienna soon after WW2, signed him up, and began recording him in that war damaged city. On this CD are heard records deriving from those early post war years, and others made in Berlin and London extending up to 1951. It was a time when the great voice was in perfect health, a little hollow perhaps but entirely free of the wobble that sometimes afflicted it above the stave in later years. And it recorded perfectly.Hans Hotter, in his early 30s, has the measure of all the lieder here. Terror, enchantment, wonder, restlessness, regret - whatever the feeling, Hotter registers it perfectly. Try to hear the twin Schumann songs (tracks 5 and 6). The voice was large, and Hotter often scaled it down to a beautiful mezza voce for lieder The only warning to issue is that almost all the music here is slow moving. 79 minutes of it at one sitting might not be wise. So much slow, mezza voce singing prompted someone in my household to comment, "He sounds as if he is half asleep".The contents include lieder recordings from Vienna, Berlin and London. Sadly, the Wagner excerpts are all truncated - the "Die Meistersinger" monologues because masters of two of the four sides disappeared in transit from Vienna to London, and only the first half of the "Das Rheingold" item was recorded. Three Handel arias are included, one of them sung in an Italian that manages to avoid making "questo" sound like "qvesto". Alan Blyth provides the notes, and full texts are provided in German and English."