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Short Notes  

Notes On this recording   

  
As with the previous three operas in this Ring Cycle, Götterdämmerung has responded remarkably to the Pristine XR remastering treatment, with a sound that's full, rich, clear and bright. In this instance tape hiss is very slightly higher than in the other operas, though at a level the listener will soon cease to notice. I felt that any further noise reduction would prove too distructive to the wonderfully clear delivery of the soloists heard throughout the opera. Unlike the others in this Ring there are no technical lapses, and sound quality is thus even throughout. Those listening to a FLAC download will appreciate no mid-scene gap in the first act - continuity can be reconstructed with the CDs, which do not fade out or in at this crucial join point. This recording has been pitched using residual mains electrical hum indicators, which indicate a performance pitch of A4=447Hz.

Andrew Rose

Legends when closely investigated do not always live up to their reputations; not so with this Furtwängler-Scala Ring. Snippets heard on 'pirated' records in wretched sound had not prepared me for the glory of the whole. Indeed I will go as far as to say that this is simply the greatest performance of the whole cycle I have ever heard. It is emphatically not for those who require perfect sound, even less for those who object to audience coughs (the Italians sometimes seem unforgivably inattentive to the aural feast they are receiving), abrupt tape joins, changes of sound level, insensitive side-changes, audible prompts, even the occasional missed entry. It is for anyone who can overcome and forget these fallibilities and hear a conductor at the peak of his powers delivering interpretations of a lifetime.

Ah, I can hear someone asking, but haven't we already a perfectly adequate Furtwängler Ring (HMV mono RLS702, 9/72) in better sound from Rome three years later? Indeed we do have that radio performance which is already an improvement over what Furtwängler achieved in the studio (where, as many eyewitnesses will tell you, he was never entirely himself), but he was at his most inspired only in the theatre. The incandescence of his conducting right from the announcement of the gold motif in the opening scene of Rheingold through to the nobility of the Immolation is unforgettable. That, and his command of Wagner's unendliche melodie, heard at its most potent throughout the first act and final scene of Die Walküre, are the crux of Furtwängler's art. They are enhanced by the wonderfully refulgent sound he seemed able to draw from any orchestra. The Scala players, much more accomplished than their colleagues of Rome Radio, enable him to knit together scenes with unerring breadth at fundamentally fast speeds, here quicker than those in either the Rome performance or in his Bayreuth Ring in 1936.

His approach was at once romantic and tragic, elemental and profound. As DC said in reviewing the previous set: there is "his ability to make the music surge, or seethe, or melt, so that one had left the world of semiquavers altogether"- although nobody is in fact more apt at making Wagner's semiquavers tell than Furtwängler-"and is swept up in a great spiritual experience". What was true on that occasion is even more so in this theatre reading. You can hear it in the glowing outburst after Freia is saved, in the "sehr ausdrucksvoll" passage just before the Walsüngs arrive in Act 2, in the whole of the Waltraute scene in Götterdämmerung, and, of course, in the Funeral March and Immolation, where he is joined by Flagstad in an inspired account of the familiar music, both artists in the words of the old Record Guide in discussing their 1952 HMV version "magnificently at one in realizing the spaciousness and melodic richness of Wagner's immense peroration". Incidentally, I wish someone would make available again the 1948 78 rpm version (HMV DBG792-4, 12/48), in some ways the most magnificent immolation of all.

Flagstad's complete Brünnhilde is at last preserved for posterity. Modi and Varnay in the immediately succeeding generation may have extracted more intense responses from the text and so conveyed more of Brünnhilde's anguish, as in the passage just before Wotan's Narration and in much of Götterdämmerung, but neither they nor anyone since, even Nilsson, could match the sheer vocal ease and lyrical beauty of Flagstad's singing as exemplified in the passage "Der diese Liebe" in the final scene of Walküre. Furtwängler, on this and other evidence, seemed to draw from her a more ready response to words, a more eloquent manner of phrasing, and that is apparent throughout, nowhere more so than at "Oh, Siegfried! Dein war ich von je!" in Siegfried.

Most of the other major roles are taken here by Germans, and that leads to the inestimable advantage of clear, idiomatic enunciation of the text. There is more to it than that. Most of the artists concerned were admired by Furtwängler, who obviously favoured singers who relished their words and especially their consonants. Take Rheingold. The veteran Joachim Saltier, who is the Loge, had not the most ingratiating voice but his intelligent, unusually accurate account of the role precisely fits the description of the character as the Ring's sole intellectual. Those used to Neidlinger's powerful Alberich may at first be disconcerted by Pernerstorfer's less dominating portrayal, but again he sings the notes as written rather than hamming them, and does much by clever understatement. Hongen, not the steadiest of Frickas, again wins me over by her touching utterance, so moving at "Wotan, gemahl". Ludwig Weber brings a Lieder singer's colouring of tone to Fasolt's music, and is a formidable antagonist for Frantz's precise Wotan, another interpretation enlivened by being heard as it were in the theatre. All these support, in a sense, what is happening in the orchestra : the piercing semiquavers as the gold is stolen, the solemnity of horns, English and French, as love is abjured, the bleak thundering of the Giants' motif, the string expansiveness in Loge's Narration, the sheer evil energy of Alberich's exultation in the third scene.

In Walküre, Gunther Treptow sings simply the Siegmund of one's dreams, a real Heldentenor in the possession of an intelligent mind and an obviously inspired soul who is forgiven one or two vocal fluffs no doubt caused by being carried away in the inspiration of the moment. Konetzni is in much surer form than in the Rome performance, an eager partner for this Siegmund. The heightened responses in the whole of the last scene of Act I could not possibly be kindled in the studio. Act 2 is perhaps a little less remarkable, a moving Todesverkündigung apart, but in Act 3 a whizzing "Ride of the Valkyries" leads into a splendid final scene, furious Wotan being turned to sympathy by Flagstad's eloquence.

Siegfried was not supposed to be Furtwängler's opera, but he docs marvels with all voices of nature music that pervade this score, and the elemental, driving energy of the forging music. The musical signs at the recollection of the Walsüngs woe in Act I, could hardly be more moving, the closing duet more ecstatic. His Siegfried is the youthful-sounding, heroic Svanholm, so poetic in the Forest Murmurs. He inevitably tires towards the end of the work. Markwort is not such an accurate or precise a Mime as Patzak, but in his deft characterization avoids Stolze's exaggerations. Josef Herrmann, the Wanderer, has the timbre of a true Heldenbariton. His performance is impressive for its line, unforced, absolutely steady tone and superb diction. Hongen's Erda is admirable for the same qualities as her Fricka, but her greatest performance comes as Waltraute in Götterdämmerung, remarkable for its urgency and gravity of utterance.

This final opera is distinguished by Max Lorenz's eager, young-sounding (remarkable when you consider he was nearly fifty at the time) Siegfried, and a kind of ecstatic wonder in his third-act Narrative. Weber's plausible, but rather roughly sung Hagen, Herrmann's virile Gunther, Konetzni's comely Gutrune, and good Norns all positively second Flagstad's glorious Brünnhilde. The Scala chorus suggest raw energy without resorting to coarseness.

In summing up, I must again emphasize the technical faults of the recording. Against that can be set a very natural balance between voice and orchestra, and the absence of any distortion, even though, to get the cycle on eleven discs, some sides are more than 40 minutes long. Those who already have a studio-produced set, or who are collecting the Goodall English Ring, may like to invest in this Scala performance as being complementary to the other. In some shops it is available at a good deal less than the recommended price. As such it is an unrepeatable bargain that for the perceptive listener will be a source of constant enlightenment and inspiration, even if it at the same time belittles some of its more pretentious rivals. 

A.B., Gramophone, October1976