(Gulp) Wagner Questions

Hi Todd,

have you thought of logging in under a new name and identity? This is getting serious!

What happened? Are Pac North West days suddenly extended to 36 hrs for you to get into opera - in different versions? Where do you get the time?

For a complete Ring and certainly for Tristan I'd go for Böhm. See Wagner / Parsifal thread maybe two months back.

http://forums.naim-audio.com/eve/forums?q=Y&a=tpc&s=67019385&f=38019385&m=5581942145&p=1

http://forums.naim-audio.com/eve/forums?q=Y&a=tpc&s=67019385&f=38019385&m=5071950185&p=1

Herman

Todd, you seem to have a way of homing in on every bad recording, so no wonder you end up disliking most of these operas.

First, the Ring cycle. There has been much debate here over the years about the best versions of the Ring, but it is widely acknowledged (at least on this forum) that Solti, while occasionally impressive, is not the version to have, nor is Karajan. The Sawallisch set is taken from the Munich production previously issued on video (which I have), and is actually very good, so I would recommend this ahead of either Solti or Karajan.

For Lohengrin, I agree that Kubelik is excellent. However, the best recording is Kempe on EMI.

Tristan is Wagner's greatest opera, and one of the landmarks of Western music. Bohm and Kleiber are both excellent. I hate the Furtwangler recording, but I am in a minority here.

Ross

Another vote for Karl Bohm.
14CD on the old Philips label. Also remastered but sold separately (new Philips).

Thanks for the suggestions. It looks like Bohm receives a number of nods for both The Ring and Tristan, so I'll see if I can find them. The Sawallisch Ring is intriguing for the cheap price ($84 new) so I may not be able to pass it up. And I can get the Kempe mentions pretty cheaply, too, so who knows. (And thanks for the Strauss recommendations, Ross. Looks like I'll have to buy some Karajan there.)

I want to make it clear that I am not buying the versions I listen to, but rather am borrowing them from the local libraries. That accounts for the Solti-heavy accounts. I have some trepidation about buying opera recordings without at least hearing what they might be like. (I would have tried Kleiber's Tristan, for instance, but some asshole has had it out for over a month.)

Why not buy first and take a chance? Take John Adams's Nixon in China, as an example. This work is a piece of shit, plain and simple. And that's after about 30 minutes. I could not waste my time with the rest. I would have been pissed had I bought it new or even used.

And I can only wish that days were 36 hours, but if one dispenses with television completely and ignores other music for a couple of months, one can listen to many operas.

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... if one dispenses with television completely and ignores other music for a couple of months, one can listen to many operas.

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Dispense with television? If I have to choose between Buffy and Siegfried, Buffy kicks Siegfried's puny teutonic ass.

Ross

Todd.

Anyone who could possibly suggest Karl Böhm's Ring can safely be classified as a musical illiterate and positively deaf when it comes to Wagner. Surely the composer must be rolling in his grave that people are actually favouring such an insipid recording.

Get the Clemens Krauss set.

Vuk.

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Surely the composer must be rolling in his grave

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I would be very gratified to think that he was spinning like a yo-yo.

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Anyone who could possibly suggest Karl Böhm's Ring can safely be classified as a musical illiterate

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Vuk, could you please explain exactly what qualifies you as more musically literate than Herman, JarrettH or my humble self.

Ross

"Vuk, could you please explain exactly what qualifies you as more musically literate than Herman, JarrettH or my humble [sic] self."--Ross

How about the fact that I'm able to grasp why the Böhm Ring is an abysmal failure while the three of you can't.

Vuk.

Vuk,

Some might argue that this qualifies you as less musically literate. Now, please, how about a serious answer?

Ross

Ross.

You and Hermoan have repeatedly expressed contempt for Wagner on this forum. Your thoroughly un-Wagnerian choice of performance for his greatest achievement reflects that attitude and should be dismissed outright. For some reason, the two of you are afraid of the masculine and it would be appropriate if you stuck to advice regarding Debussy and friends, where I am sure it's spot on.

Vuk.

Vuk,

Responding with insults (is it actually an insult to be called "un-Wagnerian"?) may be a neat way to side-step the question (or at least it would be if we were all 12 years old), but I'm not buying it.

While I would probably be better off not replying to your silly anti-Wagnerian taunts, I will anyway. First, I have a couple of shelves of my CD collection (and the same again in my LP collection) devoted to nothing but Wagner. I have 5 different versions of Die Meistersinger, 4 of Lohengrin, 3 1/2 Rings on CD plus 2 on video/DVD, 2 Tristans, a couple of Wesendonck lieder, and no doubt others that escape my memory. I have attended performances of the complete Ring at Covent Garden, Der Fliegende Hollander twice, and Tristan. In this very thread, I have described Tristan as "one of the landmarks of Western music". To suggest that I have anything other than reverence for Wagner's music is demonstrably ridiculous. True, as a human being, Wagner was a worthless piece of shit, but since when has that been relevant?

As to being "afraid of the masculine", and inferring some sort of division of music between he-man German symphonies and effeminate French chamber music, I'm afraid this distinction exists purely in your mind, my friend. Indeed, what are you implying by your yearning for the masculine, and frequent, explicit rejection of the feminine (not that there's anything wrong with that)? (And please don't reply by posting another photo of a woman.)

Vuk, I have no problem if you don't like Bohm's recordings, and no difficulty if you express this in clear and forthright terms. But however much it irks you, you are not the sole arbiter of musical taste, and while you are certainly musically literate, there are quite a few other people on the forum who also fall within that description.

Ross

I was wondering how come the Wagner thread had suddenly grown so big...

I can't recall ever having expressed 'contempt' for Wagner, but why debate a non-issue? Ross's reply just about covers it all.

About Böhm I'd say, as many others have said, it is probably the best choice for a single box. The other route is having five different sets, so as to have a favorite recording of every single episode. I'm not sure Todd is looking for that.

Herman

I'm not sure why this forum doesn't like the Solti - so far I have found it to be consistently more satisfying than Barenboim and Furtwangler. However I've recently managed to get hold of the Boulez DVD's ; I've only sat through Das Rheingold so far, but it's pretty good

When it comes to Tristan, I have yet to find a really good version. I couldn't honestly recommend the Bohm and Karajan.

No-one's mentioned Parsifal in this thread yet. IMHO, Karajan is first choice.

DJH, I agree, the Boulez Ring is very good on DVD.

Parsifal, of course, it completely slipped my mind for some reason. The Karajan recording is okay, but it suffers from colourless early digital sound, and soupy conducting. The Knappertsbusch recordings, either the 1950s one on Teldec or the 1962 Bayreuth performance on Phillips are in my view much better, in terms of conducting, singing and, in the case the latter, sound quality as well.

Ross

And I forgot to mention Domingo's "bleeding chunks" from Tristan, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung - these are really excellent, and I will be looking forward to Pappano doing a full Ring cycle.

Cheers

Parsifal is for me Wagner's crowning work (and one hell of a piece about the fear of the feminine ).

We pretty much covered it in the upper thread I linked in my first post here.

Actually in some respects Vuk's attitude in matters Wagnerian (and Brucknerian) is kinda cute.

I suspect back in the old days when these composers lived and had to fight for their status there were folks who talked about their heroes this way, feeling the constant need to attack some enemy who neglected to show appropiate veneration etc, and for whom Bruckner was way better than Brahms because Bruckner ate an Entire Roast Chicken (or maybe two) before starting the Eighth!

So perhaps we get a peek into period practice this way.

Herman

I know, it's nothing but Ersatz Wit but it's the best I can do...

I'm also not sure I think of Tristan as Wagner's greatest opera - the most harmonically advanced yes - but also the one where words and music seem most at odds. Not sure which I'd vote for Gotterdammerung, Meistersinger and Parsifal are all worth considering.

Vuk, seeing as you would admit that most of your introduction to Wagner was through Solti, recommending something in good sound like Bohm to a newcomer seems reasonable to me.

I've been trying to get my hands on the Krauss set, but it seems to have been deleted

David

Such vitriol when discussing one of the big Dicks.

Which set of The Ring? Bohm causes some nastiness, I see. But after having listened now to the first three operas of the exalted set, with a second attempt at Gotterdammerung coming tonight (after my miserable experience with Karajan a few months back), and I can say with some confidence that I may very well like the Bohm set if for no other reason than he may lighten Wagner's operas a bit. The scoring and orchestration are a wee-bit heavy at times, and can tend towards opacity and dullness, though Solti's conducting is to blame here. (Is the opening to Act 3 of Die Walkure really supposed to be that heavy, slow, and choppy? I even know it's not.) Yes, a more sensitive, articulate baton is needed. Fortunately, there is that cheap Sawallisch set that keeps coming up in my mind. And then all these mentions of Boulez; now there's a conductor who might help this work. One or perhaps two sets will have to do.

I must confess that even if I did not like The Ring, I would have to buy a set, for, you see, my six-year-old son came ambling in near the beginning of Das Rheingold wondering what it was. As I explained the story of the opera and the cycle to him he sat with his mouth slightly agape and his eyes tranfixed at the mention of giants, dwarves, Gods, warrior-maidens, a magical Ring and Helmut, dragon-slaying, and the whole bit. Thus far he has listened to about 4-5 hours of the cycle with me and paid so much attention that he could even tell when Wotan or Siegfried were singing. Not that that is really hard given the motifs assigned to the characters and the voices involved. I believe his favorite part so far was when Siegfried killed Fafner. He's (sort of) hooked.

Now for the bad news about Wagner: while his music is inspired, his poetry is less so. Am I the only one who finds some or much of the libretti for these operas pretentious, boring (at times), and sometimes downright silly? It seems that Wagner had too high an opinion of himself. Really, better writers were around. At least Strauss was wise enough to rely on people like Wilde and Hofmannsthal. And while I cannot condone Ross's previous labeling of Siegfried as retarded, he is not the most inspiring musical hero.

I must respond to the outrageous and silly denunciation of Debussy. As a composer I find Debussy to be at least the equal of Wagner. One of my favorite operas is Pelleas et Melisande (the Abbado recording), which I think eclipses Wagner's works in a number of ways, though I can clearly hear the influence of Tristan. And could Wagner have ever written piano music worth repeated hearings? I don't think so.

[This message was edited by Todd Arola on FRIDAY 29 November 2002 at 18:56.]

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Now for the bad news about Wagner: while his music is inspired, his poetry is less so. Am I the only one who finds some or much of the libretti for these operas pretentious, boring (at times), and sometimes downright silly?

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You are not the only one - it is a well-understood phenomenon. Some German friends used to say that they envied non-German speakers when listening to Wagner. Wagner's "poetry", his awful alliteration and bad puns are just painful. It's a good thing he was a musical genius or his operas would only be performed as comedies.

Ross

Wagner's words

I would not agree with your friends Ross. I'm glad I can hear what Wagner is talking about, even if it's boring or bullshit occasionally.

Wagner's libretti (I'm not sure he would agree with a Italian term like that) are very different from each other, I'd say. Tristan, with all that short alliterative verse is completely stultifying. You don't notice when you're listening, but try and look at the page... The Ring is OK, and (again) the way Parsifal is written is pretty neato, seriously.

And as far as narrative structure goes Wagner is way up there. The way he welded disparate stories into single, completely compelling narratives is absolutely astounding.

Herman

Herman, you obviously don't have the appropriate amount of contempt for Wagner. I agree that in terms of dramatic structure, Wagner isn't too bad, though he's no da Ponte. But the alliteration and puns aren't unique to Tristan, they're all through the Ring as well. There was a thread a while back where we collected quite a few of these Wagnerian howlers but unfortunately the search engine can't find it, and I can't be bothered listing them again.

Ross

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I can say with some confidence that I may very well like the Bohm set if for no other reason than he may lighten Wagner's operas a bit. The scoring and orchestration are a wee-bit heavy at times, and can tend towards opacity and dullness, though Solti's conducting is to blame here. (Is the opening to Act 3 of _Die Walkure_ really supposed to be that heavy, slow, and choppy? I even know it's not.)

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I've just listened to the third act of
Die Walkuere under Solti to try to understand this, and I cannot. And how can a comparison be made to a recording that you haven't heard yet?

Mostly you're right David (or was it Duncan?), but one can speculate based on one's experience with the conductor in other composers.

If you're familiar with the way Kubelik 'does' Dvorak, for example, you can have some kind of expectation as to what his Brahms or Beethoven would be like.

And then you go and listen.

Herman

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Is the opening to Act 3 of _Die Walkure_ really supposed to be that heavy, slow, and choppy?

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No it isn't. I certainly pity the orchestral players who had to sit in front of the brass section.

David

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Originally posted by DJH:
And how can a comparison be made to a recording that you haven't heard yet?

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I was not necessarily comparing the Solti recording to the Bohm, or any other; rather, I was comparing it to how the flow of the music felt or should feel, and more importantly to other versions of the music that I have heard, all of which were quicker and more flowing. (My local classical station plays complete operas every Saturday and regularly plays those unhappy bleeding chunks from long operas - I got to hear a disappointing The Gods Entering Valhalla conducted by Ormandy about the time I started listening to Wagner, for instance.)

After having finished Solti's Ring, I can state that I will buy at least one set, but I will do my best to avoid hearing his recordings again. To his credit, his Gotterdammerung rather easily outdoes Karajan's hideous set, but that's not saying much. Solti's set is finely engineered and has some good singing, but there are better Wagnerians out there. Hell, just comparing his Lohengrin to Kubelik's showed that much better can be had.