Availability Pristine Classical

Richard WAGNER (1813-1883)
The All-Wagner Concert, 22 February 1941
Lohengrin (1850): Act One Prelude [9.32]
Tannhäuser (1845): Dich, teure Halle [5.41]
Die Walküre (1870): Act One, Scene Three [27.46]
Tristan und Isolde (1865): Act One Prelude [12.24]
Götterdämmerung (1876): Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey [20.38]: Siegfried’s Death and Funeral March [13.14]: Brünnhilde’s Immolation [20.21]
Lauritz Melchior (tenor), Helen Traubel (soprano)
NBC Symphony Orchestra/Arturo Toscanini
rec. Carnegie Hall, New York
Includes radio announcements and interval talk by Samuel Chotzinoff [20.56]
PRISTINE AUDIO PACO105 [55.15 + 73.29]

Arturo Toscanini is a name that still casts a long shadow in the world of classical music 63 years after his death which was brought on by a stroke at the age of 89. The tempestuous maestro was famous for his intense emotional investment with the music that he was conducting. His quest for perfection is almost legendary, which is why his old recordings still have something to tell us today despite the limited sound technology of the era. We are lucky to be able to appreciate his style with a handful of mature Verdi operas as well as Fidelio and La Bohème, but when it comes to Wagner there is only his live Die Meistersinger from the 1937 Salzburg Festival to give us a clue to his approach to the Mount Everest of opera composers. This recording of a live benefit concert from Carnegie Hall will have to serve for all time as the guidepost for Toscanini’s way with Wagner. Fortunately he also had two of the more distinguished Wagnerian singers of the twentieth century with him along for the ride.

I auditioned this recording using Pristine’s FLAC download service which I then converted to CDs to play on my sound system. The first half of the concert opens with the Prelude to Lohengrin. Toscanini’s tempi feel propulsive but not necessarily hurried. He eschews loading any sense of spirituality on the piece but delves more into thrust and energy, such as his bracingly vigorous leap forward at the climax. This is followed by Helen Traubel’s magnificent greeting to the Hall of Song from Tannhäuser. Traubel was a major artist during the war years. On commercial recordings she can seem somewhat staid and less involved but in her live recordings the passion and commitment of her singing combined with that gloriously solid voice still have the ability to strike awe in the listener. Her urgent singing of the aria has intensity and vibrancy even though she only just manages the climatic high note. This is possibly as much due to Toscanini’s tempo rather than any flaw on her part. The final piece of the first half of the program is the Act 1 love scene from Die Walküre. This introduces the legendary Danish tenor Lauritz Melchior. He was the ubiquitous Wagnerian singer of his day. His bright-edged, powerful tone would have cut through most opera house acoustics like a shogun wielding a masamune. He is in really splendid voice for this concert; his cries of “Wälse! Wälse!” are truly shattering. He can be less successful at executing the quieter music, and there are a couple of occasions where in his excitement he sings a bit sharp. I note that once or twice he gets slightly ahead of Toscanini and the orchestra. Traubel is already an overwhelming presence in “Der Männe Sippe” but she really comes into her own when she enters “Du bist der Lenz” like an entire armada in full sail. Toscanini shows a remarkably sensitive side here. I don’t ever recall hearing the sword motif sound as magical as it does here. This is thrilling stuff indeed.

The second part of the concert opens with a predictably impassioned reading of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde. Like most of the pieces in the second half, it is given with a concert ending tacked on which in my opinion is unconvincing and unnecessary. The music of Tristan does well with Toscanini’s intensely earthy approach to it. It was a missed opportunity not to include the Liebestod, especially considering he had Traubel standing by off-stage; yet another instance of a great “might have been”.

The remainder of the concert is taken up with Götterdämmerung. It begins with a powerful performance of the dawn duet for Siegfried and Brünnhilde. Here the natural bright edge to Melchior’s voice seems to fit far better with the character of the heroic man-child of Siegfried than the sadder more desperate Siegmund of Die Walküre. Traubel is again magnificent but she is only able to skim the high C at the climax of the duet. The NBC orchestra really sounds at its best here. Toscanini drives the strings to some really cutting sforzandi that make a deep impression for their unusual intensity. From there we move into a lithe and glittering account of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey. This is followed by Siegfried’s Death and Funeral March. Toscanini performs it as a purely orchestral piece. Why Melchior was not permitted to sing his lines is unfathomable. As it stands the music has a great hole in the center because of the lack of the vocal part. The Funeral March is full of tremendous power and urgent in its pace. The middle of this excerpt is the one place where the overall quality of the original recording seems to diminish for nearly a minute before returning to its normal excellence. Finally the concert ends with Brünnhilde’s Immolation scene with Traubel, formidable and commanding in her vocalization. Here the warmth and fullness of her lower range is a particular joy to hear. She also is capable of great delicacy when she hones her columnar tone down to suit the more intimate sections such as at “treuer als er hielt keiner”.

Pristine Audio has acquired a generally spectacular sounding recording of the entire concert including all of the announcements and an Intermission feature where writer Samuel Chotzinoff discusses Wagner. They have kindly included all of it, tracked so that one may eliminate the spoken parts as one might wish. Listening to it certainly contributed to the real feeling of a special occasion occurring on that Saturday evening so long ago. Pristine’s sound re-master is excellent. The ambient stereo sound gives a true live presence to the orchestra. The voices benefit from a more flattering acoustical space around them, which feels true to the sound of an excellent concert hall and does not draw undue attention to it. This is an art that Andrew Rose really excels at and is what makes the series of releases on Pristine Classical so worth listening to. This is one case where so-called “Golden Age Wagner performance” still retains most of the gilt.

Mike Parr

Previous review: Paul Corfield Godfrey