‘Go on, amaze me,’ disbelievers in old singers and old records will sometimes say – and Jadlowker will duly oblige. In the Idomeneo aria (‘Fuor dal mar’, in German and in its virtuoso form) superiorly-raised eyebrows will be seen to lower, drowsy eyes to grow wide and sceptical jaws to drop. That the amazed may then be astonished, play ‘Ecco ridente’ from Il barbiere di Siviglia. That the astounded may settle to some more sober kind of appraisal, play almost anything else: the gently meditative aria from Les Huguenots, the deeply moved plea for oblivion in Dubrovsky, the gracefully addressed Serenade of Richard Strauss, the infinitely tender lullaby of Grechaninov. Jadlowker was a wonderfully complete singer. His legato is the real thing, his florid work a world apart from the lightly aspirated runs of others or those in which the notes are tapped in place as by a little hammer. The years find him firm-toned as ever, singing at 50 with the evenness of his prime caught in the early records of 1908. His mastery of the trill is an incidental grace, yet typical of him as it is exceptional in others. He phrases thoughtfully, is careful with language, broad in his musical interests.
And of course he is not perfect. There is no Italian juice in his voice, whether the richness of a Caruso, the sweetness of a Gigli, the vibrancy of a Corelli. It even has a dead area – dead, that is, in this Italianate context where vibrancy is life. That is somewhere around the upper D and E, an important area in the tenor range, and it works against an unqualified attribution of grace and elegance. It is quite possible that ‘in the flesh’, with hall or theatre-resonance, and with a normal orchestral accompaniment, this may have been (so to speak) absorbed, but on these early recordings it is not. It creates a somewhat paradoxical impression. The only thing I can add is that hearing more of him, as on this two-CD issue, is never too much; on the contrary, it sharpens liking, appreciation and respect.
He made many recordings (the discography in Record Collector, March 1970, lists 235 items), and this present selection is a good one. From Mozart it moves to French opera, then Italian; it takes in some more from the German, Czech and Russian repertory and ends with song. Missing are examples of his Lohengrin, Tannhauser, Radames and Otello. Of his most famous creation, Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos, nothing was recorded; nor (it appears) was anything of his work as a cantor. Transfers are clean and carefully pitched; the booklet has some excellent photographs and a useful article by Tom Kaufman. The issue is most welcome – with just the slight caveat that one must hope it does not preclude the possibility of a complete edition (formidable undertaking though it would be) sometime in the future.'