Arturo Toscanini’s
Tristan und Isolde from the 1930
Bayreuth Festival – the conductor’s
debut, and the first non-German conductor
to work at the festival - may well be
the only performance of the opera that
Wagnerites hear as an interpretation
in their mind rather than through the
medium of real sound. Its reputation
is legendary, bestriding Tristan’s
at Bayreuth from Elmendorff and Furtwängler,
and is cast with the strongest possible
Wagnerian singers of the time. Interpretatively,
this is one of the slowest Act I’s on
record – at just over 90 minutes in
length only Bernstein, more than half
a century later, in Munich, exceeded
it.
Toscanini conducted
a great deal of Wagner throughout his
long career, although complete operas
from him were rare (he only returned
to Bayreuth once more, to conduct Tannhäuser,
in 1931, and withdrew from the 1933
festival because of Hitler’s accession
in Germany). A surprisingly large amount
of this material remains unpublished
– his 1937 BBC Wagner concert, in variable
sound, contains performances of the
Faust Overture, ‘Siegfried’s
Rhine Journey’, Siegfried Idyll,
Lohengrin Preludes to Act I and
Act III, ‘Forest Murmurs’, Tannhäuser
- Overture and Venusberg Music - and
‘Ride of Valkyries’. His 1952 La Scala
Wagner concert contains unpublished
performances of Siegfried Idyll,
‘Siegfried’s Rhine Journey’, ‘Siegfried’s
Funeral Music’, Lohengrin Preludes
to Act I and Act III, Meistersinger
Act I Prelude, ‘Good Friday Music’,
‘Forest Murmurs’ and ‘Ride of Valkyries’
and his Lucerne concert from 1938 has
Siegfried Idyll and Meistersinger
Preludes to Act I and Act III. Of his
NBC Symphony concerts, ones from March
1938, February and October 1939, January
1946 and April 1947 all remain unpublished.
All of these concerts offer extraordinarily
fertile interpretations, and show a
conductor who constantly evolved and
shifted his insights into Wagner’s music.
Tempi are invariably shaped differently
between concerts, sometimes markedly
so.
The discovery of this
Act I from Tristan, which has
been reproduced faithfully, if in rather
opaque sound, is something of a revelation.
Whilst Toscanini often programmed music
from the Ring, Lohengrin
and Meistersinger, he returned
to Tristan relatively infrequently
after his Bayreuth performance, so this
is not just an exceptional find, but
one of paramount historical interest.
The length, in part, can be attributed
to the fact that Toscanini allows this
music to breath with unusual fidelity
to the score. We get a wonderful full
bar’s rest after the opening chord,
for example. It was not always the case
with this conductor that this was reproduced
so faithfully in his conducting of Tristan
in later years.
What emerges, however,
is a performance not just of breadth
but of Romantic lyricism, an unusual
concept for a Bayreuth audience more
used to hearing Elmendorff’s stereotypically
restrained Germanic ascent through the
score’s terrain. Bayreuth audiences
may have considered Toscanini’s Nordic
Italian roots to be quasi Germanic,
but the impression this recording of
Act I gives is of a musician who endows
the score with an overt Italian warmth;
it comes closest to de Sabata’s post-War
Tristan in terms of its sonorities,
but without the fiery La Scala drive
which sometimes overwhelms de Sabata’s
account. True, the orchestra’s contribution
is robust, even rather matter of fact,
but compared to Elmendorff their string
legato sings with a rapture German conductors
did not capture at the time. There is
an underlying clarity and precision
which stamps itself on the performance;
rhythms are razor-sharp, even tellingly
defined, and Toscanini is able to control
the act’s romantic passion without drying
out the opera’s inherent eroticism.
Perhaps most impressively, and this
is where the performance outshines Elmendorff,
is in his shaping of the act’s progression
from Prelude to conclusion. Toscanini’s
devotion to Wagner and his intimate
knowledge of the score, allows him to
take the act in a single, unbroken musical
line.
His singers are at
one with their conductor’s conception.
Lauritz Melchior in perfect vocal control,
is never less than deeply involved.
"Was ist? Isolde" comes from
a deep preoccupation with his Isolde,
but almost from the beginning one detects
this as being the most noble and restrained
of Tristans, helped in no small measure
by Toscanini’s gripping control over
the orchestra. There is the slightest
hint of panic in his voice – which is
what he should be expressing – at "Wo
sind wir?", and Toscanini encourages
Melchior, through the deeply expressive
string tone, to a closing scene with
his Isolde of considerable devotion.
Nanny Larsén-Todsen is a magnificently
well-defined Isolde, the voice moving
between dark-toned beauty and barely
suppressed starkness in her exchanges
with Anny Helm’s liquidly sung Brangäne.
Her curse is rivetingly done. Only the
Kurwenal of Rudolf Bockelmann slightly
disappoints, in part because of a lack
of flexibility his slightly high baritone
voice sometimes betrays. One wishes
here – and it is the only possible criticism
of this astounding performance – that
Toscanini’s Kurwenal had been Friedrich
Schorr, a singer both more solid of
phrasing and more rich in thought. Bockelmann
lacks the insolence in his exchanges
with Brangäne, but there is no
doubting his loyalty to Melchior’s Tristan.
Anything by Toscanini
is worth listening to, but his Wagner
could be very special. This performance
is exactly that, a record of a unique
musical occasion preserved in more than
serviceable sound. If Act’s II and III
ever emerge from the archives, this
could just be the finest Tristan
of the Twentieth Century.
Marc Bridle
Bayreuth Festival Chorus and Orchestra/Arturo
Toscanini 
