Richard WAGNER (1813-1883)
Complete Overtures and Orchestral Music from the Operas
Die Feen (1834): Overture [13.22]
Das Liebesverbot (1836): Overture [9.00]
Rienzi (1842): Overture [13.13]
Der fliegende Holländer (1843): Overture [10.37]
Tannhäuser (1845): Overture [15.16]
Lohengrin (1850): Preludes to Acts I [10.37] and III [3.02]
Tristan und Isolde (1865): Prelude and Liebestod [18.20]
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868): Prelude [10.02]
Die Walküre (1870): Ride of the Valkyries [4.49]
Siegfried (1876): Forest murmurs [8.24]
Götterdämmerung (1876): Rhine Journey [12.52] and Funeral March [8.06]
Siegfried Idyll (orchestral version, 1878) [17.01]
Parsifal (1882): Prelude [14.26]; Good Friday Music [11.15]
Hamburg Symphony Orchestra/Alois Springer (Feen)
Luxembourg Radio Orchestra/Alois Springer (Liebesverbot)
Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Heinrich Hollreiser (Idyll)
St Louis Symphony Orchestra/Jerzy Semkow (Parsifal: Good Friday)
Philharmonia Orchestra/Yuri Simonov (others)
Recording dates and venues not specified
BRILLIANT CLASSICS 94937 [3 CDs: 67.30 + 63.26 + 51.13]
Any set that advertises itself as “The complete
overtures and orchestral music from the operas” is offering an obvious
hostage to fortune. This release is very far from being absolutely complete.
The omission of the early concert overtures Rule Britannia and Polonia
is excusable, since Wagner himself regarded these apprentice works with disdain
and would almost certainly have been horrified by their revival. That said,
the concert overture to Faust is a mature work of which Wagner thought
sufficiently highly to subject it to revision as late as the 1850s. It really
should have been included here. The orchestral music drawn from the operas
leaves out a number of pieces that we have been given in other sets of Wagner,
including for example the Paris version of the Venusberg Music from
Tannhäuser and the Third Act Preludes for Tristan, Meistersinger
and Parsifal. If the excuse for these omissions is that – for
example – the Faust Overture does not come “from an opera”,
then the inclusion of the Siegfried Idyll, similarly a purely concert
work, is peculiar. The real reason would appear to be that Simonov’s
two CDs which form the backbone of this set did not include the omitted items.
An attempt has been made to approach “completeness” by the addition
from various sources of the overtures to the two early operas Die Feen
and Das Liebesverbot, the Good Friday Music from Parsifal
and the Siegfried Idyll. The effort extended no further simply because
suitable recordings were not available. Whatever the reason, the claim to
completeness cannot possibly be conceded as valid. There would certainly have
been room for at least some of the missing items on the discs. The addition
of a further CD would have enabled the collection to be truly comprehensive.
The Simonov recordings originally appeared on a pair of full-price Collins
Classics CDs, and the first of these was welcomed with enthusiasm by Ivan
March both in a review in the Gramophone (published in October 1991)
and in the Penguin Record Guide. The second CD seems to have passed
by almost unnoticed, and neither appear to have been more than sporadically
available since the demise of the Collins label. This Brilliant set describes
the recordings as having been licensed from Phoenix Music.
The third CD here derives from the Vox catalogue, but these recordings do
not seem to have troubled reviewers at all on their initial release, whenever
that may have been. With the exception of Heinrich Hollreiser, none of the
conductors or orchestras featured here have anything in the way of substantial
credentials as Wagnerians. The Philharmonia have appeared on many great Wagnerian
recordings stretching back to Furtwängler’s Tristan und Isolde,
and famously recorded many of these operatic excerpts with Otto Klemperer
in the 1960s - including some items omitted here. That was many years ago,
and very few of the players at that time will still have been active in the
1990s when Simonov made these recordings. The booklet and CDs are completely
silent about the matter of recording dates and venues, and I note that when
John Quinn reviewed
an earlier Brilliant reissue of the second CD for this site back in April
2003 this information was not supplied then either; the other Simonov CD is
reviewed here.
On the other hand, the playing of the Luxembourg Radio Orchestra in the overture
to Das Liebesverbot — given without any of the unnecessary
cuts that disfigure some other performances — is distressingly imprecise.
The percussion persistently either lag behind or push ahead of the beat at
the daringly fast pace set by Alois Springer. He gets better results from
the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra in the Weberian overture to Die Feen.
The St Louis Symphony under Jerzy Semkow are decidedly more assured in the
Good Friday Music from Parsifal. Heinrich Hollreiser produces
a definitely Wagnerian sound in the Siegfried Idyll, given here with
full orchestral forces although the strings sound scrawny and undernourished
in places.
The lion’s share of this box consists of the sessions with the Philharmonia
under Yuri Simonov. The sound produced there is luxuriantly Wagnerian indeed
with exactly the sort of saturated string tone that the music requires. The
prelude to Parsifal which opens the whole collection is very slow
and solemn but breathes precisely the incense-laden atmosphere that the music
evokes. Simonov deserves additional credit for providing us with the beautifully
ethereal concert conclusion which Wagner specifically supplied for performances
of the prelude in the concert hall — and included in the full score
of the opera — but which is comparatively rarely heard. Klemperer included
it in his recording with this same orchestra. Many conductors have preferred
instead to finish with the ascent onto high woodwinds which leads in the opera
directly into the opening scene, but which fails to provide a convincing conclusion
when the music is heard in isolation. Simonov even manages to make the Forest
murmurs from Siegfried cohere into a unit, toning down the over-obvious
use of the glockenspiel which Wagner introduced to replace the sung voice
of the Woodbird when Siegfried understands what it is trying to tell him.
The Valkyries here ride with great vigour, helped by a steadiness of pace
which allows the swirling counterpoint to come through clearly. The conductor
further demonstrates the soundness of his Wagnerian instincts by his decision
to dispense with the tawdry upbeat concert conclusion which Humperdinck supplied
for Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, and which totally contradicts
the transition in mood which Wagner has so carefully established in the preceding
pages. This leads into a stunningly powerful rendition of the Funeral
March although, as so often, the swirling harps at the climax are barely
audible. Wagner specifies six instruments here, but since he only wrote two
actual harp parts the number of players is frequently reduced. This is furnished
with the usual concert conclusion but I must admit to some regret that Simonov
in his performance of the Tristan und Isolde Prelude and Liebestod
gives us, not the linked concert version that Wagner himself prepared but
the two extracts played in their entirety - without the voice in the Liebestod.
Ernest Newman states in Wagner Nights that the conflated piece was
the standard version during the 1930s, but it seems to have fallen into total
disuse after the Second World War. I only encountered it for the first time
in performance a few years ago. It seemed to me an admirably unified ‘tone
poem’ encapsulating the whole opera, and it is clear from the analysis
of it that Wagner supplied for King Ludwig that he would have expected performances
in the concert hall to take that form. So far as I am aware that version has
still not been recorded.
The question of concert endings does not impinge to the same extent on the
mainly self-contained items on the second disc. The overture to Rienzi
which opens the CD can sound noisy and brash in the wrong hands, but Simonov
manages to introduce a good deal of subtlety into the inflection of Rienzi’s
prayer at the beginning and is skilful in his integration of the various march
themes later on. Indeed, this is one of the most convincing interpretations
of this overture that I have heard. Der fliegende Holländer, on the
other hand, is not really ear-pinning enough at the start, and at rather fast
speeds seems to acquire superficial excitement rather than anything deeper.
Tannhäuser is stronger in the stately delivery of the Pilgrim’s
Chorus than in the more febrile Venusberg music of the central section. The
prelude to Lohengrin, however, taken at a daringly slow pace, is
something rather special with the ethereal violins providing a real sense
of disembodiment at the start. Simonov scores points, too, for his willingness
to allow the music to expand at its own steady pace rather than pushing forward
to the climax. After this we have a rather good performance of the Lohengrin
Act Three prelude with a concert conclusion which truncates the transition
into the Wedding Chorus. There's also a well-integrated Meistersinger
which correlates the various themes well with each other.
Simonov was responsible for the re-introduction of Wagner to the Bolshoi repertoire
during his tenure there. Otherwise he has not seemed to be closely involved
with the music of this composer. Nonetheless he is clearly a Wagnerian of
considerable skill, rather in the manner of Goodall than of Solti. These are
among the best recordings in the catalogue of this repertoire. It is a great
pity that he has not been given the chance to record more substantial passages
of Wagner, or even complete operas. Record companies could do a great deal
worse. When he reviewed the reissue of the second of these discs for this
site, John Quinn complained about the lack of booklet notes. Here Brilliant
have supplied a five-page brief biography of the composer’s life by
Philip Borg-Wheeler which covers most of the basic points required.
Those who are seeking a compendium of Wagner’s orchestral music will
find the performances here generally more satisfactory than on a similarly
incomplete set conducted by Fabio Luisi which I reviewed a couple of years
ago. Those seeking a more modern recording than the old stalwarts by the likes
of Klemperer,
Karajan
and Solti will find here performances which have their own valuable insights.
I note however with some surprise that Arkiv currently lists the Simonov discs
as being available as a two-disc set on Regis released as recently as December
2013. For prospective purchasers this could be a more attractive option. In
this Brilliant box it is just a pity that more material could not have been
assembled for the third disc to ‘plug the gaps’, let alone other
“orchestral music from the operas” such as The entry of the
Gods into Valhalla and the Magic Fire Music, both of which Klemperer
included in his recordings with this orchestra. It is odd too that record
companies, usually so eager to promote the Wagnerian repertoire, have neglected
lesser orchestral pieces such as the Heroic March — the best
of the three ceremonial pot-boilers written by Wagner in his mature years
— and the Faust Overture.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
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