Desert Online General Trading LLC
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Desert Online General Trading LLC
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Product description Astrid Varnay .com It's still easy to imagine the anticipation that must have attended the Bayreuth Festival in 1951 when it reopened for the first time since the war. This was the epoch-making summer when Wieland Wagner began to unveil a bold rethinking of his grandfather's canon--and to distance his art from the ideological trappings of the Third Reich--through increasingly austere and abstract productions. One member of the recording teams on hand (rivals EMI and Decca) was John Culshaw, who would later become famous as the mastermind producer behind the first and still most-popular studio recording of the Ring. Despite problems with the rest of the cycle, Culshaw managed to register its epic concluding work to his satisfaction. Yet that legendary Götterdämmerung sat in the archives for almost half a century due to contractual complications. This release at last makes its glories available. Conductor Hans Knappertsbusch--a master of the grand old tradition who is above all prized for his incomparable accounts of Parsifal--presides over a majestically scaled performance right from the doom-colored opening chord. Its cumulative power builds like a juggernaut. Though Knappertsbusch's famously weighty pacing makes this probably the slowest Götterdämmerung on record, the tempi rarely feel distended but rather enable Wagner's densely webbed, late-style ripeness to reverberate with its full emotional resonance. Knappertsbusch also knows how to keep a particular dramatic moment taut without losing his command of the larger context, as in the confrontation between Brünnhilde and Waltraute or Act II's vengeance trio. And in the funeral march you won't hear Soltian muscle but a profoundly resigned summation far subtler in its impact. The relatively young cast features some of Bayreuth's finest postwar artists, several making their festival debut during the 1951 reopening. Astrid Varnay proves her claim as Flagstad's successor, imbuing Brünnhilde's transfiguring love and subsequent betrayal with a presence that is completely gripping from the beginning to the cycle's cataclysmic end. Variety of color endows Bernd Aldenhoff's Siegfried with more dimensions than most interpreters; he can be sweet-voiced or imperious, rising to glory in the Act I duet and summoning a blustery bravado in his scene with the Rhinemaidens. Marth Mödl's angsty, dark-hued tone gives Gutrune an intensity far beyond the usual passive dimwit, while Hermann Uhde portrays her brother--despite his straining upper range--as a complex tangle of ambition and self-doubt. An integral part of this tremendously tight-knit ensemble is Ludwig Weber's intimidating Hagen. He gives the villain a truly Iago-like scope, brooding in the malignancy of his monologues and striking a chord of sheer terror in the scene of Siegfried's murder. In short, this set belongs in the collection of anyone interested in the performance of Wagner--or of great musical drama, period. --Thomas May
A**3
Fantastic, historic performance
Love this! I have waited to hear this for quite a while, and hesitated at the cost. Then, this week: Fantastic early Christmas present for myself! Great performance, in stunningly good mono sound. I have the 1956 M&A Kna Gotterdammerung, and this blows it away performance and soundwise. Culshaw is a magician; not only is the sound great, for once a recording in Bayreuth favors the singers over the orchestra. There are moments in Act 1 Scene 1 when you would swear Hagen and Gunther were singing right into the microphone. They may have been; mic placement for this recording was spot on for vocals. Enunciation is crisp and clear to the point you utterly forget it is mono. There is a "front-to-back" depth that more than makes up for the "left-right" dynamic of stereo. In other words, despite being mono, the sound is dimensional, not flat. Occasionally the orchestral moments are a bit distant (Siegfried's horn during the Rhine journey), but nothing ruinous. The singers are awesome, and Bernd Aldenhoff is my new favorite "mature" Siegfried; he is fantastic! If you love Wagner, or historic recordings, don't miss this! It was worth the exorbitant price! Good thing they only captured this one - the 1951 Ring in its entirety would have been Gotterdammerung to my bank account!
A**O
Slow tempi add to the monumental sonic structures of the Ring
Despite a loss of low frequencies, the recording captures a grand and clearly articulated version of The Ring. The historical context adds to a feeling of fresh rebirth and hope despite the ruins still visible everywhere.
A**L
Excellent
I can't get enough of Act 2 and 3 of this performance, just beautiful, but I still prefer Furtwangler's 1950 Scala and 1953 RAI radio recordings.GotterdammerungRichard Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (RAI, Rome 1953)
D**S
Legendary recordings are desert island dreams.
As regards operatic recordings the words legendary and definitive have always hit me like an air raid siren. Watch out! I am bewidlered by the many positive reviews and Brunnhilde like greetings which this recording has received. Live recordings have an authentic ring to them but too much of the cast here lets one [me] down. Aldenhoff is not a Siegfried find and he mars so many of this opera's great moments. Varnay has always been a mystery to me. Exciting, maybe thrilling, intense and sincere artist though she be, the voice has never led me to name her a part of a legendary recording. Culshaw seems to be the only honest person in his remarks about the recording and the status accorded it many decades ago before it was released. On hearing it I have many unanswered questions as to what constututes legendary. Something like the Bohm or Solti recordings? The Rhinemaidens are extraordnary but the opera is not called Die Rhinemaidens. The Norns are good, the Hagen beyond priase. I don't think the sound is as bad as one reviewer judges it but the orchestra is very disappointing. At times it sounds like a pick-up orchestra with ten minutes notice. Yet somewhere I read that the orchestra was handpicked from the best orchestra players available. I guess the key word is available. Maybe everyone was having opening night post war Ring jitters. I hope so. I just think I didn't get my investment's worth. After the recent Met Tristan everything pales in comparison especially legendary performances. Miracles don't happen that often.
P**N
Classic! And frustrating at times. But a Must-Have.
This Götterdämmerung from Bayreuth in 1951 under the direction of Hans Knappertsbusch is legendary for good reasons.What is enlightening to me is that after years of believing the accepted gospel that Kna was 'slow' is to discover that he is NOT.He is grand, stately, monumental, prescient, psychic even, bringing the music alive with his very flexible speed changes and willingness to delve deeply into the darkest places in this music without becoming lugubrious. Kna illuminates! He can also be gossamer-like, as in the scene with his magnificent trio of Rhine Daughters, where he accentuates the harps in the most natural and folkish manner. In the great tragic moments, the Siegfried's funeral march and Brünnhilde's Immolation, he pumps up the cellos and basses and sweeps the listener along on a gorgeous lava-flow of sound.He dares to be so slow, yet the music does not drag. In fact it gives the tired singers a chance to breath! But these singers of his, Astrid Varnay (Brünnhilde), Bernd Aldenhoff (Siegfried) and Ludwig Weber (Hagen) would be difficult to tire from the glorious sounds they make up to the very end of this long opera. Varnay is just plain amazing. She has seemingly unlimited reserves of power in her beautiful, resiny and fruity voice. She never wobbles or shrieks or hits high notes flat. And her words are crystal clear. She can blast out the Immolation and the curse trio in Act II as well as deliver the best coloratura when she tells the assembled guests, again in Act II, that [Siegfried] 'forced me to desire and love him'. She gets every single little note in and sounds a creditable bel canto expert for a few seconds. No one has sung this line as accurately and confidently as she does here.Ludwig Weber was 52 at the time of this recording and still in prime vocal condition. His Hagen is extremely theatrical and solidly sung, evening vocally beautiful at times. There are so many ways to interpret these characters and Weber's more suave yet very dangerous villain is one of the more interesting performances on record. Opposite to the great brutes like Matti Salminen (Janowski) and Aage Haugland. I understand why some are less than enchanted with Bernd Aldenhoff's Siegfried. He goes into overdrive when he's singing loud and high, similar to what Reiner Goldberg does for Levine. Aldenhoff has a beautiful voice, young-sounding, virile and sturdy from top to bottom. He doesn't wobble or bark and his words are very easy to understand. I like him best when he's singing in the lower more baritonal register, as in the scene where he is pretending to be Gunther confronting Brünnhilde at the end of Act I.His death scene is extraordinary in it's intensity and pathos, one of the very finest in my experience, followed by Kna's massive and over-whelming Funeral March.The Gibichung royals have never been better rendered than by Martha Mödl (Gutrune) and Hermann Uhde (Gunther). Mödl is every bit the regal lady as Brünnhilde but, being human, lacks the goddess's subtlety. This is no shrinking violet but a machinating sorceress looking for a man of her 'own'. The spoiled princess who thinks she can buy love.Elisabeth Höngen's Waltraute is up there with the best if not The Best. She was still in top voice in 1951. She is not overly melodramatic, in fact she's very subtle but still unleashes her huge powerful voice to stunning effect. Heinrich Pflanzl makes much of his eerie scene with Hagen, appearing as he does to his son as a nightmare of sorts, urging Hagen to be loyal to the blood line, of the Nibelungen!The Rhine Maidens are sublime, led by what I will go out on a limb and call The Perfect Woglinde of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's. She has the lightness of touch, the intelligence of word-pointing and the vocal power and heft to ride the waves of the louder passages and lead her sisters through the occasional metronomic confusions Kna's often unusual tempi cause some of his cast from time to time.There are a number of disconnects between pit and stage but nothing bad happens because Kna has his finger on the pulse of the proceedings and leads his singers out of any whirlpools and squalls he creates from time to time.There are some ensemble problems in the Norn scene. Nothing gets out of hand with Knappertsbusch's unerring sense of how to avert disaster but only Ira Malaniuk (the Second Norn) comes out unscathed at the end. All three sing very well, though Martha Mödl has an uncomfortable bout of singing out of tune for a few bars. His Norn scene is indeed very slow but not ponderous or boring, just DEEP.The sound is a little rough and ready with a few bad flaws in the original tapes. The worst one on the set I have is at the end of the Immolation. Just as Brünnhilde greets 'Grane, mein Ross!' there is a sudden aural 'bump' and the sound, which was a little distant during most of the Immolation, as if Varnay was stuck upstage (though perfectly audible) suddenly pops in to loud in-your-face immediacy. Unfortunately this also includes a big jump from that point to the last lines in this famous scene. VERY annoying and it ruins the whole build-up for me, but it wasn't the fault of the singers or Kna but the carelessness of Testament in releasing such a blunder. There are no discernible scratches or blemishes on the compact disc so it had to be a problem introduced at source.And this was an expensive set too! But I can't return it now, receipt long gone, so I will just have to suck it up every time I listen to this great and important recording.
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