ELSE BREMS - Naxos Music Library

was carried through, however, and achieved great
success. The recording of the famous love duet (I, 5)
bears witness to the high musical standard of this
performance. Bess's soprano part was in this duet
transposed to suit Else Brems's mezzo, and,
incidentally, also the sonorous bass-baritone of her
Porgy, Einar Ngrby. The two singers enjoyed such
immense popularity in Copenhagen in those yeils that
they were even asked to perfom in a cantata by Emil
Reesen, Z/ze Department S/ore, written for the 75th
anniverstry, also in 1 943, of the Copenhagen depart
ment store 'Magasin du Nord'. The performance
became a society event with royalty among the
audience. The cantata was recorded on two discs. and
here the two singers, assisted by the famous actor Poul
Reumert, animate some amusing scenes from the
everyday life of a big department store. After the war,
when Todd Duncan, the original Porgy, visited
Copenhagen, Else Brems sang together with him, and
rehearsed the love duet in English for the occasion. In
1953 she experienced a vedtable break-through as a
comic singer as the greengrocer Mrs. Hering in Benjamin
Britten'sA/beft Herring.In 1955 she celebrated
her 25th anniversry as a singer in Britten's The Rqpe
of Lucretia. With her classic beauty and noble dignity
she was a very moving Lucretia in the tuagic drama
about the noble Romm lady who commits suicide after
having been raped by Tarquinius.
Else Brems even tried her hand as an actress. She was
the young noblewoman Elisabeth Munk at the open air
performance in Dyrehaven north of Copenhagen of
J.L.Heiberg's The Elf Hill. After the war the play was
transfered to The Royal Theatre, and here she was
instructed in the treatment of her lines by the great
actress Bodil Ipsen.
She did several parts for the Radio Opera e.g. Genevidvein
Pelldas et Mdlisande andBrdainlhe Rheinsold.
but she only managed one paft on television where she
sang Mother Kuen in 1961 in Hanest by Svend S.
Schultz.
The Oratorio Singen
In 1939, the year she did Ofeo at The Royal Theaffe,
she started working with the conductor Mogens Wiildike
md the Copenhagen Boys' Choir on a perfomance
of Handel's oratorio Saruson. "Else Brems sang the pafi
of Micha with authority and great beauty of voice - in
fact, the cumulative effect of the whole work found
expression in her interpretation of Micha's moumful
'Bewail ye God's people yow gallant wmior', which
was felt as an intensification of the spirit of the entire
oratorio", said the music critic Erik Abrahamsen.
Throughout the succeeding decades the critics followed
her career with unabated warmth and interest. The
collaboration with Mogens Wcildike tumed out to be a
happy one, indeed. His lyrical approaches to the major
musical works of the Baroque was in superb harmony
with Else Brems's temperament. For yems they worked
together on Bach's passions, Handel's oratorios, and
Schubert's masses, among others.
Luckily, Radio Denmuk has kept in its mchives several
complete recordings of these in the Wdldike/Brems
versions, e.g. irc St. Matthew Passion and the Saul,
from which the excerpts here ile taken. (1, 9& 10, I 1,1 2).
In 1946, Else Brems sang the part ofthe angel in Edwtrd
Elgil's ?he Dream of Gerontius, conducted by Erik
Tuxen. The perfomance won much praise, "in that voice
lives not only the voice of an angel, but also the hearl of
a human being". Sadly we do not possess any recording
of this, but we do have the whole ofA. Dvordk's Stabal
Mater, condrcted by Rafael Kubelik in 1957 in which
Else Brems gave a brilliant, dramatic perfomance, "the
flnest perfomance of the evening", in the 'Inflammatus
et Accensus', the mia included here (I,13).