In January, Hans Hotter celebrated his 94th birthday. Just 30 years before, Hotter returned to London to give what was to be his last recital. As I recall, he was in excellent voice. At the time, Decca, in the person of Christopher Raeburn, decided to make two LPs of his Lieder singing. At 64, well retired from the stresses and strains of his Wagner career, he was obviously relaxed and eager, in what were to be his last solo recordings (though he did go on to record a Winterreise in Japan), to give a resumé of his achievement in the field. Sadly, Decca soon deleted these issues, and they have not been heard of since, so their reissue in this three-CD issue is most welcome.

There is a wisdom and maturity in most of these readings, like some well-matured wine, that makes them rather special. Particularly in Loewe, Brahms and Wolf, the strength and power of his singing allied to his keenly honed insights into the texts are memorable. In the Loewe, for instance, the Wotan-like strength of Odins Meeresritt is finely contrasted with the gentle, warm humour of Die wandelnde Glocke. In Brahms the autumn-hewed Auf dem Kirchhofe and Mit vierzig Jahren always found in Hotter an ideal advocate, as did the Michelangelo Lieder of Wolf, all very much bass-baritone territory; but he could also find a lighter manner for the love songs of the Italian and Spanish Songbooks.

The Schubert items, finely sung as they are, do suffer from the big downward transpositions. The 1961 Winterreise is the least inviting of Hotter’s three available recordings. His voice seems in rather dulled state and Erik Werba is a laboured partner. Far better the haunting, wartime version and the classic 1955 EMI account, both better accompanied. The EMI is just one of the many and important records Hotter made for the company in the late 1940s and ’50s, when he was in his prime, now all happily available from the issuing company or from Testament.

In the 1930s and early ’40s Hotter was as fêted for his Italian as for his German repertory, and in 1942-43 he made a number of 78s for Polydor, included here on the third disc. At that time his timbre was more baritonal, his top easier. With his sense of characterisation, his Iago, Toreador and Tonio, though sung in awkward German translations, are formidable. Then there are his earliest versions of the Dutchman’s and Hans Sachs’s monologues (he didn’t actually sing the cobbler/poet on stage until 1947 – at Covent Garden, in English!), and of Wotan’s Farewell. All these interpretations were to develop considerably in the succeeding decade, but even at this early stage, they are vocally rewarding, particularly Hotter’s warm, youthful resonance and detailed enunciation in the two Meistersinger pieces.

The booklet note offers little or no information on the recordings, and no texts are included, poor treatment for such an important issue.