Gerhard Hüsch

Such important overseas theatres as The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, and La Scala, Milan, heard him sing during the 1930s, when his international reputation attained its peak.

He partnered many of Germany's best sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, tenors and basses of the inter-war years, while Bruno Walter completed a triumvirate of lastingly famous conductors with whom he appeared (the others being, as we have seen, Toscanini and Beecham).

Lacking the sheer vocal amplitude of his heroic baritone contemporaries Hans Hotter and Rudolf Bockelmann, Hüsch concentrated instead on investing his singing with an unfailingly smooth line, a rounded tone and beautifully lucid diction in the manner of a celebrated German lyric-baritone rival, Heinrich Schlusnus, who was his senior by 13 years.

He performed on disc the first more-or-less-uncut versions of Schubert's Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin song-cycles, and Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte; his discs of songs by Hugo Wolf, made under Walter Legge's auspices, helped introduce that composer to thousands of music-lovers previously unfamiliar with Wolf's output; and he released a generous selection of songs by Hans Pfitzner, these recordings bearing the imprimatur of Pfitzner himself at the piano.

His recorded work in this field including an exceptional Jesus in a wartime set – severely abridged – with Günther Ramin conducting, of Bach's St Matthew Passion.