100Singers's video: 100 Singers - JEAN L HE

Jean Löhe, Tenor (1901-1990) Engelbert Humperdinck: "Am Rhein" ("By the Rhine") - Song Eduard Künneke: DER VETTER AUS DINGSDA (THE COUSIN FROM NOWHERE) "Ich bin nur ein armer Wandergesell" ("I am only a poor journeyman") Conducted by Simon Krapp Recorded 1950's My personal opinion: After the Viennese baritone Leopold Demuth had heard the 17-year-old Richard Tauber, he wrote to his father: "Please don't let him sing, his voice is as thin as a twine ..." Nevertheless, Tauber's voice was sufficient enough for an exemplary career. After more than thirty years on stage, he gave his last performance 1947 in London (Don Ottavio), a few months before his death. Tauber's popularity was tremendous. Immediately after his passing, the search for a successor began. Soon many tenors appeared, which were geared towards Tauber. Some of them had no scruples, to copy shamelessly the voice and gestures of the late tenor. But the greatest career of all subsequent tenors was made by a man, who did not sound like the legendary idol: Rudolf Schock (1915-1986). The only reference was, that Schock took over from Tauber in the summer of 1949 a scheduled tour through Australia. Four years later, the German tenor embodied Tauber in the movie "Du bist die Welt für mich". It was the beginning of Schock's own great career. Richard Tauber's opera roles went to the Belgium born Marcel Wittrisch (1901-1955), and the Swiss tenor Herbert Ernst Groh (1906-1982) adopted most of the operetta parts. One of Groh's teacher was Carl Beines, who also taught Tauber. Groh became an excellent operetta singer in radio and on records, but for some he was the prototype of what is called in German language "Knödeltenor", meaning "singing with a knot in the throat" - an effect that occurs, when the sound of the human voice is artificially narrowed, for example if one imitates for fun an opera singer. A tenor with a similar timbre as Groh was Jean Löhe, born in Cologne. I still remember a nice conversation I had with the daughter of tenor Friedrich Eugen Engels (1909-1994) in the German town Solingen. She told me, Löhe was one of the few singers her father appreciated. "What Domingo and all the others do, has nothing to do with singing. They are squallers ...", she quoted her late father, who was a close friend of bass-baritone singer Willy Schneider and Rudolf Schock. Jean Löhe's career was one, that actually was none. Born in a poor family, he was after hard years of working already 35 years old, when he began his vocal studies in his hometown. As late as in 1940, he got an engagement at the Municipal Theatre of Koblenz, where he met a young soprano named Anneliese Rothenberger. Then Löhe was called-up for the armed forces and fell into Russian captivity. He was already a man in his mid-forties, when he was released. Löhe received firm contracts at two theatres in Thuringia and Saxony, drew attention and was allowed to travel to Berlin, where he made recordings for the RIAS Broadcasting service. After the terrible war, people had a need for distraction, and Löhe with his radiant and appealing tenor voice became one of the busiest radio singers. Meanwhile he was too old for a career on the opera stage. Now in his fifties, Jean Löhe rose to unsuspected popularity throughout Germany. One of his main activities took place at the WDR radio station in his hometown Cologne, where he made a number of lovely operetta recordings. Some of this material was later transfered to vinyl and CD. Naturally, Jean Löhe's heyday in the limelight was short. His late career lasted no longer than one decade. At the age of sixty, he retired increasingly. So it's understandable, his popularity faded quickly, especially as all attention in Germany was directed to Rudolf Schock and Fritz Wunderlich. Surely, it would be an exaggeration to claim that Löhe was an underrated key singer or an insiders' tip. Just like Wittrisch and Groh, he swam too much in the backwash of Tauber. Although he possessed impressive voice material (this also applies to Groh), his style of singing was somehow provincial and without refinements. Löhe never had the chance to develop artistic perfection. The circumstances worked against him. Nonetheless, his recordings of operetta and popular songs benefit from a kind of uninhibited charm. He enjoyed his listeners with the luminosity of his virile tenor voice - and not with a wide range of expressiveness. Still today, he has admirers. Jean Löhe: A singer for nostalgia-aficionados and retro-fans ...