KNAPPERTSBUSCH The 1956 Wagner Ring Complete - PABX045

"Chiefly renowned for his Wagner interpretations, Knappertsbusch disliked recording as much as he abhorred rehearsals. He preferred to “wing it” in the theater, allowing the inspiration of the moment to guide the performance at hand, letting the chips fall where they might. Consequently, you never knew what you were going to get for the price of your ticket. For instance, there are wonderful moments aplenty throughout the 1957/58 Rings. But the stodgy, pedestrian, and often sloppy work that generally persists does not hold up under the microphone’s unforgiving scrutiny. Not that Knappertsbusch would have wanted these Rings issued, but that’s neither here nor there.

On the other hand, just about every bar of his 1956 Ring reveals that Kna could deliver first rate, even inspired goods when he put his mind to it. Even considering the tortoise-like pacing and massive textures, Knappertsbusch’s shaping of each opera boasts more pointed detail, greater animation within phrases, and sharper dramatic contours. His singers, in turn, respond with more vivid performances than their norm under this conductor. Perhaps the principals (Varnay, Neidlinger, Windgassen, Hotter, and Greindl) are in fresher vocal estate three years earlier for Clemens Krauss and Joseph Keilberth, yet their moment-to-moment involvement plus unusual care in making the words clear is never in question.

Both Siegfrieds were still relatively new roles for Wolfgang Windgassen, and his interpretation had evolved quite a bit in three years, especially in the opera named for the protagonist. The hero’s Act Two musings take on a new introspection, and there’s more intensity now to his crucial encounter with the Wanderer in Act Three. Die Walküre lets us hear Windgassen’s Bayreuth Siegmund for the first time; the tenor was an eleventh-hour replacement, and an effective one at that. Gré Brouwenstijn partners him as Sieglinde, and the soprano radiates more spontaneity here than in her underrated studio portrayal under Leinsdorf. In Götterdämerung Brouwenstijn’s inward and musicianly Gutrune breathes new life into a role that is often slighted. Hans Hotter brings immense authority to both the Rheingold and Walküre Wotans and the Wanderer in Siegfried, and is in fresher voice than for his contributions to the renowned Solti studio Ring. Astrid Varnay’s powerful Götterdämmerung Brunnhilde, by contrast, is a shade less steady than the 1951 Bayreuth performance under Knappertsbusch issued on Testament."

Jed Distler - Classics Today, review of Music & Arts issue (excerpt), 1998

"[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)

The rest of the cast should not be overlooked either. Gré Brouwenstijn is a gleaming, impassioned, youthful Sieglinde, her voice true throughout, and she makes a seductive and scheming Gutrune as well. Josef Greindl, a singer whose reputation I have often had difficulty relating to, is here more than solid. He sings with a steadier tone than was often the case, and he is a vocal and dramatic presence, though greater variety of shade and light would have made his Hunding and his Hagen more interesting. Gustav Neidlinger is the ideal Alberich, the music sung with precision and attention to Wagner's dynamic marks, and the character vividly drawn. One cannot imagine a Ring cast nearly this well, from top to bottom, today.

As for Knappertsbusch, this Ring may be his crowning achievement on disc (though he didn't know it was being preserved for disc at the time). It is not without its problems. Youngren points out some of them (the huge ritards at key points in two appearances of the "Ride of the Valkyries" music, for instance). There are times when momentum and/or thrust are lost: sometimes this seems to be due to a lapse in concentration, and at other times from a willful change in tempo that makes neither musical nor dramatic sense. The orchestral ending of act I of Walküre seems quite badly organized from the podium, and the intensity that had been built up for an hour is somewhat dissipated by oddly directionless conducting in the final minute. At Donner's "Heda, Heda Hedo" near the end of Rheingold Knappertsbusch again loses the momentum for just a moment; but it's a key loss, one that jars. Those, however, are moments in the minority. For the most part, this is conducting of scope, grandeur, and richness, and conducting that keeps moving forward. Most critical commentary on Knappertsbusch centers around matters of tempo (actually, most critical commentary about conducting in general suffers from the same limitation). Tempo is important, but cannot be separated from other interpretive decisions and other aspects of a performance. Central to any performance of a large-scale musical-dramatic work are matters of phrasing, of color, and, most importantly, matters of intensity, of sustenance of tone. It is here where Knappertsbusch scores so compellingly. Listen to the strings repeat the music of "Der Augen leuchtendes Paar" in Wotan's farewell, curving themselves lovingly around the theme with just the right touch of portamento and the right degree of vibrato to bring out the poignancy of the moment. Listen to the perfect sense of proportion of the various themes at the end of Götterdämmerung, a moment that, in fact, very few conductors manage to get right because of the care that needs to be taken with balances. There is a sweep and grandeur to the whole, but that sweep is the result of carefully thought-through decisions over the 15-hour span of these scores. It is the result of a balancing of textures, a rich palette of colors, and a sustained intensity of tone that the conductor calls forth from his players—and it is also the result of a company (conductor, singers, orchestra players) who know this music intimately and yearn to convey its power to the listener.

Henry Fogel, Fanfare magazine, 1998  (Part 2 - review continued from notes to Die Walküre)

In 1956 Knappertsbusch, who had shared the 1951 cycles with Karajan (Testament has issued his blinding 1951 Götterdämmering, 10/99) returned to give what is generally agreed to be his most successful reading, taken as a whole. Unlike Krauss, Karajan and to a lesser extent Keilberth, the older conductor took a more measured view of the scores overall, one based on his preference for the long paragraph, well defined, almost pawky rhythms, and prominent ritardandi at points not always indicated in the score. At moments he seems to lose focus and let things run their own way where ensemble is concerned but, as a whole, especially in Rheingold and Götterdämmerung, his epic view of the score is almost unsurpassed. Even in the two middle operas there are moments of alternating quiet reflection and earthy energy that are very special.

He has at his command an ensemble of dedicated singers who had built their characterisations to a peak of achievement by 1956. Practically all are German-speaking and all have the art of acting with their voices in an immediate and communicative way, not to forget that they each had voices of a Wagnerian power too seldom found today.

Throughout Rheingold I was astonished and delighted once more by the frightening power and presence of Gustav Neidlinger’s trenchantly sung Alberich and by the detail, feeling and vocal authority of Hans Hotter’s unsurpassed Wotan. Beside them an erstwhile Siegfried, Ludwig Suthaus, offers a Loge who gives every word, even syllable a distinctive colour and meaning, while Jean Madeira’s Erda emits other-worldly authority. And any Rheingold that boasts Josef Traxel, then a leading lyric tenor in Germany, as Froh has a bonus.

Four singers heard in later operas are introduced here. Paul Kuen, another familiar figure, is Mime and provides character without exaggeration. Georgine von Milinkovic introduces us to an imperiously nagging Fricka and comes into her own in the next work. Josef Greindl is a formidable if unsubtle Fasolt, later a granite Hunding and a fearsome Hagen: no wonder, given so much work to do, he sometimes tires a little. Gré Brouwenstijn, a properly worried Freia, then gives us a Sieglinde who develops, in glorious tones, from an introvert to an extrovert when love strikes her. Beside her is Wolfgang Windgassen, standing in at the last moment for an ailing Vinay, and singing a Siegmund who is at once bel canto in line yet intensely eloquent. Incredibly, the next evening he is a tirelessly effective Siegfried.

Hotter is magnificent in Wotan’s Act 2 monologue, here made to seem at the very heart of the whole cycle, and as ever deeply moving in his Act 3 Farewell, forgiving signs of vocal weariness at the start of the act. By then we have met and admired Astrid Varnay’s very womanly yet heroic Brünnhilde. She occasionally overdoes the histrionics but by and large she has the character in her voice and bones in a way few other dramatic sopranos have managed.

In Siegfried Hotter manages ideally the humour of his Act 1 colloquy with Mime, his face-off with Neidlinger’s Alberich in Act 2, and his desperation when meeting Madeira’s implacable Erda at the start of Act 3. The awakening of Brünnhilde is not one of the conductor’s best moments but the lovers give their all in the closing duet.

All the momentous climaxes of the cycle’s finale find Kna at his most potent and involved, just as in 1951, and Varnay seconds him with her projection of all Brünnhilde’s joy and sorrow. She also – incredibly – took on the Third Norn, at very short notice, Mödl having been taken suddenly ill. Madeira is heard again to advantage as both First Norn and Waltraute – would any singer do both today? Act 2 is simply tremendous. In this work Brouwenstijn returns as a vocally comely Gutrune, and Hermann Uhde, as in all the 1950s cycles, is an unsurpassed Gunther. With the Immolation one rightly feels that the earth has moved and that one has been through a life-enhancing experience, which is as it should be.

Alan Blyth, Gramophone magazine, 2006  (excerpt)