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MusicWeb International Review
There are some singers here whose natural abilities still match or even transcend anything we can hear today
REVIEW OF VOLUME 3
It may be perverse, but it makes some sense to deal in the first
instance with the supplementary disc provided here containing the
Appendices. Just over half of this disc consists of six excerpts from Siegfried
featuring Rudolf Laubenthal, which were jettisoned from the original
78rpm boxes in favour of the tracks featuring Lauritz Melchior which
were issued by
Nor does the singing on the first CD of Götterdämmerung
do much to substantiate the often-trumpeted notion of the 1920s and
1930s as a ‘golden age’ of Wagnerian singing. The Prologue, briskly
despatched by Coates, features a trio of Norns none of whom would pass
muster today and in particular the pipingly small-voiced Noel Eadie who
completely fails to engender any sense of drama as the scene moves
towards its climax. When the lovers finally appear, Florence Austral and
Walter Widdop seem to be flailing frantically to keep up with the
headlong pace that is set for them by Albert Coates; and once the
curtain has descended, he despatches the Rhine Journey at a speed that
would give the Flying Dutchman pause for thought. Even Alan Blyth,
normally an admirer of this conductor, describes his pace here as
“ridiculously fast.” Nor, when we reach the Gibichung court, do things
improve much, since neither Arthur Fear and Frederic Collier begin to
come to terms with the dramatic element of their characters and it is
left to Göta Ljungberg in her few phrases to supply an element of vocal
distinction.
The record containing the oath of blood
brotherhood did not form part of the original boxed set of 78s but was
clearly intended to fill in a gap in the plot which would otherwise have
existed, and here everything suddenly comes to life. Lauritz Melchior
and Friedrich Schorr make an ideal coupling, and the excerpt here leads
nicely into Hagen’s Watch which is given a performance by Ivan Andrésen
which is quite simply superlative, encompassing the lowest notes with
ease and producing tone and diction which are black as night. He is
equally good in the high notes of his summoning of the vassals (slightly
cut) where the chorus respond superbly to his call, although no attempt
is made to comply with Wagner’s request for a smaller number of voices
in the opening section. Before that, at the end of the first CD, we have
heard a solidly contralto performance of Waltraute’s scene from Maartie
Offers, although she displays distinct signs of uneasiness on her
highest notes, some of which she truncates very abruptly. This excerpt
goes on through the exchanges with Brünnhilde, only concluding on the
entry of this disguised Siegfried. Albert Coates takes surprisingly slow
tempos throughout this scene, except in the passage describing Wotan’s
felling of the World Ash Tree which takes on a sudden spurt of energy
which verges on the jaunty. One suspects that this, and perhaps other
unexpectedly fast tempi, may have been conditioned by the need to fit
the music onto one side of a 78rpm record.
Widdop and Austral
are efficient rather than exciting in their taking of their conflicting
oaths, and the trio which concludes the Second Act relies largely on
Austral to generate much sense of drama although Collier and Fear are in
better voice than before. The opening scene of Act One (complete with a
niggling cut of some ten bars) suffers from a totally unengaged trio of
Rhinemaidens. Their warning to Siegfried of the curse on the Ring is so
dismally unthreatening that one can hardly blame the hero for ignoring
them. Laubenthal is in better voice here than in Siegfried, with less
purely heldentenor tones required for the delivery of his narration.
Here we are given the interjections of the vassals with the solo voice
that Wagner designates, but it sounds as though the lines are given to
Desider Zador as Gunther – which can be the only explanation that the
one tenor vassal’s lines are simply omitted. Alan Blyth describes this
recording of the narration as “one of the most clearly balanced 78s I
have ever heard” – and although
Florence Austral’s
Immolation Scene suffers from a similar combination of material from two
sessions, her voice sounding very much more distant at the beginning
than at the end. There is also an inexcusable cut of some fifteen bars
before the line “Ruhe, ruhe, du Gott!” which is all the more galling
when one realises that this omission comes at the expense of the
exchange between Brünnhilde and Gutrune which precedes the scene itself,
and which is not helped by a very underpowered delivery by Ljungberg
(or maybe she was just too far away from the microphones). We hear the
voice of Hagen (uncredited) at the end, and I am pleased to note that he
really sings his line “Give back the Ring” rather than shouting as so
many modern exponents of the role do.
Coates thankfully avoids
any sense of rush in the closing pages, but he does adopt the bad habit
of making an unmarked ‘air pause’ before the last ten bars and the final
chord is truncated rather abruptly. In the earlier part of the scene,
despite the inferior recording, Lawrence Collingwood takes a properly
measured and dignified approach.
Collingwood is also
responsible for the delivery of the brief snippets of leitmotifs on the
Appendix CD (which was originally issued on 78s separately). Each of
these is preceded by an announcer giving a number, which refers the
listener to the booklet where an explanation of each motif is given.
This may have been valuable to audiences at the time, but it hardly
comes up to the standards of Deryck Cooke’s marvellous exposition of
Wagner’s compositional methods on his 2-CD lecture which originally
accompanied Solti’s Ring (it remains available separately, as well as in
the Decca luxury limited edition). The identification of the numbered
motifs here also leaves much to be desired, with the principal love
theme described as ‘Flight’ in accordance with Walzogen’s original error
in his analysis published during Wagner’s lifetime and criticised by
the composer for its inaccuracies. The two other tracks on the Appendix
CD contain performances of the two orchestral sections of
Götterdämmerung which were superseded in the 78rpm boxed sets; but they
have a particular interest in that they are conducted by the veteran
Wagnerian Karl Muck, whose association with Bayreuth extended back to
the nineteenth century. Both extracts are truncated rather curiously,
just coming to a halt before the music actually stops. In the main set
the Funeral march is provided with a concert conclusion, but otherwise
the excerpts stick to Wagner’s operatic score. There are some other
points of historical interest, such as a bass trumpet which is clearly
not the valved trombone that one finds used on other recordings of the
period; and the cowhorns in the summoning of the vassals are simply
trombones and not the specially constructed instruments that were at
that stage still employed at Bayreuth.
I have had much pleasure
in reviewing the seven CDs that
Paul Corfield Godfrey
MusicWeb International, July 2015