KNAPPERTSBUSCH The 1956 Wagner Ring: 2. Die Walküre (Bayreuth, 1956) - PACO211

"[William] Youngren states that it was his hearing of this Götterdämmerung in the early 1980s that first led him to understand why some of us had long been great admirers of Knappertsbusch — and one can certainly see how this performance would have been a powerful weapon of persuasion. Knappertsbusch could be a maddeningly uneven conductor (from performance to performance, and within the same performance), but this is the finest of his surviving Bayreuth Ring Cycles. Two later ones, from 1957 and 1958, fail to achieve the consistency of inspiration and cogency of shape, not to mention incisiveness and intensity, that are found in this 1956 production.

What is it that makes this performance unique? Well, first there is the singing—this was a time when these operas could still be cast with singers who had the vocal equipment and the understanding of the style to do full justice to Wagner's scores. I realize that we have been bemoaning the loss of Nilsson for a long time now—and yes, I'd love to have her likes again. But failing that, I'd be thrilled to have a Varnay. Here was a powerful, gleaming dramatic soprano who could negotiate the music without ever forcing her voice, and who knew how to shade and color the music in a way that brought out the human qualities in Brünnhilde. It is true that she is vocally a bit unsteady in the first half of the Siegfried duet, but that music is a trial for a soprano who doesn't sing a note all night until then, and she does settle down for the final push. Her big scenes with Wotan (act II of Die Walküre and act III of Götterdämmerung) and with Siegmund (act II of Die Walküre) reveal her to be an intelligent, communicative artist who fully engages with others in meaningful dramatic exchanges. How nice to find that and the vocal heft too!

Windgassen is a marvelous Siegfried, managing to retain his voice throughout both operas and to sing with more beauty of tone than we usually associate with him. That he knows his way around the role, and inflects it with specificity of characterization, is no surprise. What is disappointing is his assumption of the role of Siegmund in Walküre, which he did on almost no notice when Ramon Vinay was taken ill. He sounds tired, and sings flat in both acts I and II. The worst ensemble mess in the entire cycle takes place between him and Knappertsbusch immediately after Sieglinde's "Der manner Sippe." It goes on for quite a while and dilutes the impact of the end of the first act.

The other great asset is, as you would expect, Hans Hotter, who conveys the complexity of the character of Wotan more completely than any other bass-baritone of the postwar era. The voice is far steadier here than it was for Solti on London's Ring, though even here his strengths are in musical-dramatic values, not in steady tone production. (In the latter regard, he is stronger in the 1953 Krauss cycle.) The mixture of anger, anguish, tenderness, and love in his feelings for his favorite daughter are crystallized as with no other singer, and he had the variety of color and inflection to maintain one's interest throughout Wotan's long monolog in act II of Walküre, given here uncut. Wotan also has a unique combination of arrogance, haughtiness, and humility, and I have never encountered a singer who encapsulated it all as well. Hotter embodies the spirit of Reynaldo Hahn's wonderful dictum on singing: "The genuine beauty of singing consists in a perfect union, an amalgam, a mysterious alloy of the singing and the speaking voice, or, to put it better, the melody and the spoken word." ... "

Henry Fogel, Fanfare magazine, 1998  (Part 1 - review continues in notes to Siegfried)