Wagner's Meistersinger

First things first, try Rafael Kubelik’s rightly lauded recording – it’s wonderful. I can think of none better. Also consider Karajan’s Dresden recording in the EMI Great Recordings line – one of Karajan’s best recordings – or perhaps Rudolf Kempe’s, also on EMI and in pretty darned good mono sound. These are my three favorites.

The only historical Meistersinger I have is Kna’s 1952 Bayreuth set, with Lisa Della Casa sounding quite fine, but it’s a bit on the long side. There’s a Bohm recording from the ‘40s that may be worth hunting down; perhaps one day I’ll hear it.


--

Thanks for these Todd.

It's funny - I was just thinking it was a while since I'd read anything from you.


regards, Tam

Well, Todd beat me to it in recommending as first choices the two recordings that I have.

The Kubelik recording (1967) was intended as a DG recording, but negotiations fell through and it was made as a Bavarian Radio in-house production instead. It includes the virtually unknown Sandor Konya as Walther van Stolzing, whom John Culshaw had long intended to cast as Siegfried in the famous Solti/Decca Ring cycle (Konya let them down at the last minute, so Decca had to bring in the 'safe' option of Windgassen in his place). Listen to Konya on this set and you'll hear that it was to Decca's great loss. It's never had a major label release and has been in and out of the catalogue on various labels, but it's currently to be had on the German Arts Archives label in a very superior remastering, which can be had from www.amazon.de for just under €50. (I'd post a link if I could, but don't know how!)

The HvK EMI GROC is also very very good, with Karajan seemingly put on his mettle by conducting the wonderful Dresdner Staatskapelle in the (old) East Germany, for the one and only time that I know of. So you wouldn't go wrong with that either.

Graham

This might work.

http://www.amazon.de/Die-Meistersinger-N%fcrnberg-Richa...7441?ie=UTF8&s=music

Tam,
I agree. Last night's performance was excellent.

Ken

Graham,
To insert a link into a post, I just copied and pasted the URL. It was recognised automatically as a link.
Cheers,
Ken

quote:

Originally posted by KenM:
Graham,
To insert a link into a post, I just copied and pasted the URL. It was recognised automatically as a link.
Cheers,
Ken

Ken

You might as well be speaking Swahili for all the good that this does for me, but that is indeed the set that I had in mind!

Main thing, though, is that the Kubelik set is a very special performance indeed.

Graham

Meistersinger was the first of not many operas I've seen in performance. Since I'm not a Wagner expert I'll just pass along a little anecdote. While working at a classical radio station in Georgia I was in the record library when the owner, who was Jewish, walked in. I remember making a casual remark about Wagner and he let loose with a brief and angry tirade. I never did program any Wagner. I don't know wheather it is a compliment to this composer or not that he still (this was in 96') is able to create controversy. In some way that tirade made a deep impression on me, and not in a negative way. Don't mean to get off topic here or bore you ......Big Brother

Dear Big Brother,

Wagner wrote one too few operas. I say this as no fan of his, but his reputation will always be tainted for Jews and others old enough to have known people affect by Nazism to find the composer's writing on Jews totally reprehensible. No wonder he was the little corporal's favourite composer...

If he had written just one more opera he would never have had time to write drivel about Jews and so forth...

ATB from Fredrik

Dear Fredrik,

Actually, I believe Hitler's favourite composer was Bruckner with whom he apparently 'identified' very much.

You are right to point to Wagner's views which were pretty abhorent. However, the reason Wagner is castigated in the way he is possibly has more to with the fact that he made his views clear - there are many other artists down the years (both composers, writers and I would imagine painters - though I do not know any examples) who had similarly unpleasant views, but didn't make them so explicit.

Personally, I subscribe to the view that the objecting to his works, and their performance, only serves to legitimise his view in a way in which they do not deserve. I much rather point to the number of very fine Jewish interpreters of them and it is clear who has won in the long run.

That said, I saw a striking piece of film once of a conductor (I think Barenboim) giving an orchestral concert of Wagner in Israel to jeers from some people who had clearly bought tickets expressly to disrupt it (one man was sat there with an old-style football rattle) - interestly the vast majority of the audience seemed simply to have turned up to enjoy the music.

One of the most moving concerts I have ever attended was at last year's festival and was again Barenboim with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. As an encoure he they played the prelude to Tristan, before which he gave a powerful little speech in which he described how the (Jewish) leader of the orchestra had been deputed to come to him and ask whether they couldn't play any Wagner.


regards, Tam

Dear Tam,

You are absolutely right about not going off the artisitc works of a master because he lucidly expressed abhorent views. There is more anti-sematism in the works of Shakespear than Wagner, but we don't castigate him for it, because he was only part of his time in this respect, as was Wagner part of his time.

My issue with Wagner is based on other things, not the least of which is the length of the works, and also the fairly (occasionally very) unlikely psychological scenarios set up in his libretti.

And I played some of the stuff too! [Smiley]!

No the continued reviling of Wagner is down, not the uniqueness of his opinions which were widespread at the time, but because he troubled to write them down, which might seem unfair, but it is true. As I say, I wish he had written one more opera, and not bothered with the Jewish writings... A shame really.

All the best from Fredrik

Dear Fredrik,

I agree entirely. Well, except about the artistic merits of his work [smiley]


regards, Tam

As Fredrik says, anti-Jewish sentiment was rife throughout most of Europe. I seem 6o remember reading though, that Wagner had a Scandinavian friend, another composer, who married a Jewish girl. Wagner was Best Man at the wedding.

Many people have prejudices against racial and religious groups but these prejudices somehow don't apply to those they know personally.

While not wishing to dismiss the persecution of Jews in Germany (my wife's mother was a refugee from Berlin), I think that maybe Wagner was just "going with the flow".

quote:

also the fairly (occasionally very) unlikely psychological scenarios set up in his libretti.

This is also very true. Of course in the Ring you could argue that gods ,nyphs and other mythical creatures don't behave the same as mortal men. Then again with that one there's the length issue.....Big Brother

Dear Tam,

Furtwangler had a particularly strange relationship with the works of Wagner. At first he detested them, largely because he had an education rooted the classics, as in ancient Roman and Greek History, and also in the classics of music. Before fifteeen he was able to play from memory at the piano all the quartetes of Beethoven for example.

Only later did he gradually move on to finding Wagner for himself, and once when asked if he found any of it made sense psychologically or had any real depth, he responded that it had next to no depth (on the sense of Beethoevn or Bach), but that the surface was the most magnificent yet devised in music. " The surface, But what a surface," was his precise comment. In that he was right, and he knew, as did some others at the time, how to weld the music into an organic whole.

Even Furtwangler's profound musical logic was not enough to lead me into the music for all that.

I do enjoy some of the extracts, not least the prelude to the Mastersingers. But for me Schubert gets more into a two minute strophic song that Wagner gets into a whole operatic scene of maybe an hour or so, and Schubert's psychology is panfully accurate, or at least it is for me - too painful for enjoyment much of the time I might add...

ATB from Fredrik

Dear Fredrik,

I do take your point - however I think Wagner does bring a sythesis of music and theatre in a way that noone else (perhaps in his way Janacek achieves something similar) quite does.

Certainly there are few conductors who can make the kind of magic with Wagner's music that Furtwangler could - though I eagerly await the new Runnicles Tristan to compare it with the late master (sadly the release seems now to have been pushed back to October - I await the call of my record shop keenly).

I'm afraid I have never really got on all that well with Schubert's songs. Though I could see an agrument that say the great c major contains wave upon wave of emotion in a way that Wagner doesn't - but I think he does tend to have few things more powerfully in his finest moments.

I think when I finally get round to paying you a visit I shall bring the Runnicles highlights disc which has some wonderful moments on it.


regards, Tam