|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Review:
The origins of this set are murky enough without Music & Arts compounding the felony. The introductory notes by John Ardoin make mention of Frida Leider as if she was on the set. . A great singer of course but not part of this although tapes of her at Covent Gardens in 1937 do exist. In 1937 HMV decided to have a shot at doing a live recording of the entire Ring, which was being given at Covent Gardens for the Coronation season with a cast which was probably without precedent in all of the history of the Ring. They recorded it once with Furtwängler and once with Beecham. There was Melchior, Leider, Flagstad, Müller, Bockelmann, Thorborg, Janssen, Weber and … but you get the meaning. What a cast! And what conductors! Well, of course it was never issued for many reasons but the acetates were not destroyed as legally they should have been and apiece here and apiece there have turned up from time to time. Actually I know two people who claim to own the entire set but … that is another story for another time. The present material has surfaced from time to time on various labels but here it is assembled in some sort of continuity and in as decent a sound as can be mustered. About the sound: It varies greatly. The orchestra is way up front often to the determent of the voices. Melchior and Flagstad almost disappear on occasion - not an easy feat with those voices! - But when they can be heard, my God! The Walküre is the more important of the two sets if only because it is the whole of Act III. What to say? Flagstad has the voice of a trumpet with a steadiness of power that quite overwhelms. There is nothing like this elsewhere for sheer beauty and command. Müller as Sieglinde must have been a marvel. Pity there is no Act I of her. How touching she is, how … human. Bockelmann as other recordings have shown was a fine Wotan but here he quite transcends especially in his farewell to his errant daughter. Moving on to Götterdämmerung the voices of Melchior and Flagstad of course predominate. They soar, they caress, they assert, they establish themselves yet again as the Siegfried and Brünnhilde of the century. How lucky we are to have them on records! But besides them there is Thorborg at her lustrous best, a splendid Gunther from Janssen and of course a properly evil and deep voiced Hagen from Weber. Important as all of these singers and the rest are it is to Furtwängler that the principal kudos must be made. Yes, we have his Rome and La Scala Rings as well as the Vienna Walküre but this is something different. All the detail with the orchestra is possible here because, let's face it, the LPO was an infinitely better band than there Italian counterparts. More than that the music breathes not only with the brute force of the writing but as well with its pathos and psyche. No other conductor ever achieved or even came close. Not a set you'll
want to miss. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
©
Copyright 2002 Classical Music Guide, All rights reserved
Site maintained by Elysium Webs |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Furtwängler at Covent Garden: 1937 Ring Excerpts
