Since most musical dictionaries (even a substantial and usually reliable German one) have not even heard of Joseph Suder, I should perhaps begin by saying that he was born in 1892 (and lived until 1980), that he had some early success in the 1920s (Karajan and Hollreiser, among others, took up his Chamber Symphony in A major of 1924) but that his career seems to have been severely impeded by the two world wars: the first prevented his graduation from the Munich Akademie der Tonkunst, the second put paid to plans to produce this opera.
The note accompanying the recording implies that Suder's unheroic hero Ladislaus (a tailor's apprentice who is taken for a nobleman because of the rich cloak that he is wearing, 'borrowed' from his master in lieu of unpaid wages) would not have found favour with the Nazis (nor would his Polish nationality, presumably), but it does not explain why the work remained unperformed until 1964, nearly 20 years after the end of the war, fully 30 after the score was completed. 'Because it would have sounded strikingly old-fashioned even in 1934' would be my answer. Suder was by instinct and inclination a contemporary of that group of German composers who were born a generation or so before him: Richard Strauss above all, Pfitzner and perhaps Reger. He is distinguished from them, however, by his method of 'thematic synthesis', whereby contrasting themes are first juxtaposed, then reconciled by being played simultaneously.
This system is not tiresomely insisted upon, thank goodness, but its very employment is symptomatic of a preoccupation, if not an obsession, with counterpoint: this is a very busy opera indeed, in which the orchestra spins lush or rhapsodic counter-melodies even when nothing of major consequence is happening on stage. The vocal lines, on the other hand, are often rather plain, disappointingly so at those climactic points of the action where one longs for an ample tune; it is as though Suder were afraid of distracting his listeners' attention from all the lovingly woven detail of his orchestral web. It is all very beautiful, mind you, and packed to busting with musical incident, audibly descended from the Second Act and final scene of Die Meistersinger by way of Marschallin's levee and the inn scene in Der Rosenkavalier, but it sometimes sounds as though all these were being played at once. Each scene (there are five) contains sufficient music for a fair-sized act, with enough left over for a violin concerto, a cantata and a ballet: Ladislaus plays the violin and demonstrates this fact floridly and at length; the final scene, in which he is mocked and unmasked (but finds his true destiny in love and violin-playing) incorporates an elaborate dance-pantomine with double chorus, somewhat unnecessarily recapitulating the story of his deception.
Severe indigestion threatens if you attempt Kleider machen Leute at a sitting. Taken a scene at a time you may be disarmed by its beaverish industriousness and its moments of charm (Annette, who sticks to the morose, introspective and for my money rather dimwitted Ladislaus through thick and thin, has most of these, and Pamela Coburn sings them purely and lyrically). The rustic humour is of the Lederhosen-clad-thigh-slapping variety, rather, but there is some nice local colour (a peasant band agreeably if irrelevantly pops up in scene 2) and a tender final love duet (the contrapuntal texture thinned out for once, and the melodic substance concentrated in the voices) that makes one wonder what Suder's less ambitious pieces might be like. A conspicuously strong performance (K7onig and Morgan are especially stalwart; Uwe Mund obviously loves the work and paces it very well) in a clean and natural recording.'