A couple of months ago I gave a rather mixed reception to a previous
volume in EMI’s voluminous Klemperer Edition. It included his
performances of romantic symphonies and overtures, some of which seemed
to find the conductor decisively out of sympathy with the music. No
such doubts arise here; Klemperer’s grand sense of style is
clearly highly appropriate to the music of Richard I and Richard III,
as they were dubbed during the later years of the nineteenth century
(there was no Richard II).
Another reason for the success of these recordings is that most of
them were made in the early 1960s, when Klemperer was still physically
capable of controlling an orchestra in the most hectic music without
having to make compromises which might perhaps be attributed to his
increasing infirmities. In this context the performances of Richard
Strauss are the more surprising, with none of the tendency towards
marmoreal speeds that marred Klemperer’s Tchaikovsky for example.
The music of Strauss really demanded the advent of stereo recording
for proper representation on record - many of his complex orchestral
textures were simply too much obscured in monophonic recordings. These
Klemperer performances should be considered as part of that initial
burst of issues during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Comparisons of the sound that Walter Legge obtained from these sessions
with those that John Culshaw was producing for Karajan in Vienna at
the same period are illuminating. Klemperer’s actual readings
of the music are remarkably similar to Herbert von Karajan’s
dynamic traversals, but the nature of the EMI recording produces very
different results. For Karajan the oboe solo in
Don Juan is
highlighted by Culshaw’s microphones with not altogether happy
results, as the rather acid nature of the playing is brought to our
attention; with Klemperer a more natural balance allows us to appreciate
more clearly the surprisingly complex orchestral sounds which underpin
the solo playing. On the other hand the Philharmonia strings produce
a much less romantically rounded sound than their Vienna counterparts,
and for an ideal balance between the two approaches one is drawn back
to the slightly earlier stereo recording of the same score made by
Fritz Reiner in Chicago for RCA.
Similar comparisons can be made between the Klemperer/Legge and Karajan/Culsaw
approaches in
Tod und Verklärung, where the death struggles
of the protagonist here lack the urgent violence of Karajan’s
very forward trombones. Less satisfactory is the problematic end of
the work, which can with the wrong approach sound so much like a Hollywood
‘heavenly conclusion’ to some epic film or other. In seeking
to avoid this effect Klemperer goes too far in the other direction;
the purposeful tread towards transfiguration is all too easily achieved,
and is not helped by some decidedly queasy-sounding brass chording
towards the end. He is, however, excellent in the pyrotechnics of
Till Eulenspiegel and drives Salome’s dance to a thrilling
conclusion; this after some surprisingly effective
rubato phrasing
from oboe and flute in the opening section. This nevertheless lacks
the sheer immediacy of the sound that Culshaw was producing at the
same time for Solti’s complete recording of the score. It is
in
Metamorphosen that Klemperer really comes into his own,
with playing from the Philharmonia solo strings that tugs at the heart.
There have been richer-sounding traversals of this late masterpiece,
but none to match it for sheer emotional impact.
Klemperer’s early 1960s Wagner recordings have long held a treasured
place in the catalogue. It is pleasing to note his reluctance to employ
the sometimes anonymous ‘concert conclusions’ that are
sometimes affixed to these ‘bleeding chunks’. So the Valkyries
end their ride in mid-flow, without the additional bars of mechanical
string scales that we frequently hear. Siegfried’s Rhine Journey
comes to a conclusion as in the full score of
Götterdämmerung
with soft chords preparing us for the next scene rather than Humperdinck’s
blatantly triumphant concert ending. It is good to hear Wagner’s
own concert conclusion to the
Parsifal Prelude, included in
the full score but rarely heard nowadays.
Some of the extracts work musically better than others. The
Entry
of the Gods into Valhalla presents us with the orchestral score
of the passage from the forging of the Rainbow Bridge onward without
any of the vocal parts. Donner’s summons sounds very odd indeed
without them - usually represented in concert performances by orchestral
transcriptions for brass - with the shifting keys which underlie the
music sounding unmotivated, almost like some early Philip Glass score.
The orchestral transcription called
Forest murmurs, combining
several disparate passages from the Second Act of
Siegfried,
does not begin to hold together as a unitary piece. It should be noted
that these extracts were among the last recorded in this series of
sessions. It may well be that they were chosen to fill up the contents
of a third LP; but one can only regret that we were not given, for
example, the Prelude to the Third Acts of
Tristan or
Meistersinger
instead of these peculiar confections.
Klemperer chooses to give us the original chamber version of the
Siegfried
Idyll, using solo strings throughout rather than the fuller orchestral
forces that Wagner authorised when he reluctantly published the work.
This is a mixed blessing; it enables us to hear the wind parts clearly
through the texture, but there are passages of string writing which
really cry out for a fuller body of sound than we get here. There
is a strong case to be made for a compromise here, using solo strings
in the opening section - originally conceived for string quartet -
and then expanding the forces in later passages. Given that consideration,
Klemperer nevertheless manages to extract considerable emotional weight
from the small forces that Wagner originally specified.
Regarding the remaining extracts from these early 1960s sessions there
is little than can be criticised. There is plenty of body - and excitement
- to the performances, and Klemperer’s massive approach to such
pieces as
Siegfried’s Funeral March, the Prelude to Act
One of
Lohengrin, the
Prelude and Liebestod from
Tristan
- given complete without Wagner’s own interesting amendment
bridging the climaxes of the two ‘movements’ - and the
Overtures to
Tannhäuser and
Meistersinger are quite
simply beyond the scope of criticism. This did not stop the
Stereo
Record Guide complaining in 1961 that the “plodding Mastersingers
are just a little too full of German pudding”, but a degree
of pomposity is surely appropriate in the
Entry of the Masters.
It is interesting to note that in his reading of the Overture to
Der
fliegende Holländer Klemperer uses Wagner’s later revision
of the score. In his complete recording of the opera he reverted to
the original Dresden version, not, it must be admitted, to the advantage
of the music.
Slightly later Klemperer recorded a series of sessions with Christa
Ludwig which included the
Wesendonck Lieder (in Möttl’s
orchestrations) and surprisingly the
Liebestod. Ludwig, a mezzo-soprano
who at this stage was toying with the idea of undertaking the major
Wagnerian soprano parts - she was approached by Karajan to take on
the role of Brünnhilde for his complete
Ring, but decided
against it - manages the
Liebestod well but not without a slight
sense of strain at the climax. Klemperer very oddly begins the extract
not with the music that precedes it in the complete opera, but with
an isolated section taken from the conclusion of the
Prelude,
which really does not work. Ludwig’s performance of the
Wesendonck
Lieder is as magnificent as one would expect, with her consideration
for Mathilde’s sometimes embarrassingly effusive words. Klemperer
makes a real highlight of the delicate shadings of
Im Triebhaus
which makes one regret all the more that he did not give us a complete
recording of the
Tristan Act Three Prelude for which this song
was a sketch.
By the end of the 1960s Klemperer’s health had deteriorated
to an extent that he was no longer able to conduct through the full
length of a recording session. He asked Reginald Goodall to rehearse
the sessions in which extracts from
Die Walküre were set
down for posterity. In this context it is illuminating to compare
Klemperer’s treatment of
Wotan’s Farewell, with
Norman Bailey as an excellent soloist - this appears to be the only
recording of him singing any part of the role in German - with Goodall’s
live recording in English made a few years later at English National
Opera, again with Bailey as Wotan. It is surprising, given Goodall’s
reputation for slow speeds - he contended that these were essential
in order to allow listeners to hear every detail of Wagner’s
scoring - to find that Klemperer adds some three minutes to the length
of this not very long extract. Indeed Klemperer’s speeds here
are really too slow, too marmoreal, to carry total conviction. Bailey,
accustomed to Goodall’s speeds - he was contemporaneously performing
the role at ENO - does not seem at all discommoded by the tempi, and
in the context of a studio recording he inevitably sounds fresher
than he did in the theatre at the end of a long evening. This recording
is a most valuable document, despite one’s reservations. Producer
Suvi Raj Grubb allows us to hear the strokes of his spear just before
the Magic Fire Music as precisely notated in the score, which adds
a touch of dramatic reality.
Similarly the performance of the whole of the First Act of
Die
Walküre simulates the sounds of a live recording, with Siegmund’s
opening words placed at a slight distance. Indeed the voices are rather
distantly placed throughout this performance, which does not trouble
the radiantly voiced Helga Dernesch and Hans Sotin, but is rather
unfair on William Cochran. Cochran is most familiar nowadays for his
assumption of ‘character’ roles such as Mephistopheles
in Fischer-Dieskau’s recording of Busoni’s
Doktor Faust
and Kubelik’s
Mathis der Maler; but he sounds quite unlike
his normal self in this performance, with plenty of heroic ring even
if the result is never glamorous. Klemperer’s speeds are marginally
quicker than Goodall’s here, but he sounds more at ease with
the love music in Scenes One and Three than with the more dramatic
confrontation with Hunding in Scene Two. His handling of Hunding’s
entry lacks the sheer sense of brute force that Goodall so memorably
achieved in the theatre. It is indeed difficult to disentangle the
contributions made by Klemperer and Goodall to this recording - the
two conductors were very much in sympathy with each other’s
approach to the music. The theatrical experience is more thrilling
in Goodall’s live performance (in English) than in this reading,
which despite the distancing of the voices persists in sounding very
much more like a concert performance. It is a particular pleasure
to encounter Dernesch’s Sieglinde, one of her signature roles
during her fairly brief soprano career before she turned to the mezzo
Fach, but which she never seems to have recorded elsewhere.
She sings radiantly and beautifully throughout.
Despite my reservations this set proved to be a most enjoyable listening
experience, both in the recordings which I remembered from their original
LP issues and those I had not previously encountered. The re-mastering
has plenty of body and faithfully reproduces the sound of the original
sessions and Klemperer’s approach to the music. We are given
no texts or translations, nor any details of the music beyond a fairly
brief essay by Richard Osborne on Klemperer’s reactions to the
two composers in question. It might have been interesting if this
had highlighted the conductor’s sometimes unexpected editions
of the Wagner scores in particular.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Masterwork Index:
Don
Juan ~~
Tod
und Verklärung ~~
Till
Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche
Track listing - Wagner
Rienzi (1842): Overture [11.33]1
Der fliegende Holländer (1843): Overture [10.49]1
Tannhäuser (1845): Overture [14.47]: Prelude to Act Three
[8.18]1
Lohengrin (1850): Prelude [9.57]: Prelude to Act Three [3.01]1
Tristan und Isolde (1865): Prelude and Liebestod [15.48]1:
Liebestod [6.55]3
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868): Prelude [10.58]:
Dance of the Apprentices and Entry of the Masters [6.52]1
Das Rheingold (1869): Entry of the Gods into Valhalla [8.13]2
Die Walküre (1870): Act One (complete) [71.43]4:
Ride of the Valkyries [2.55]1: Wotan’s Farewell and
Magic Fire Music [19.34]4
Siegfried (1876): Forest Murmurs [8.28]2
Götterdämmerung (1876): Siegfried’s Rhine Journey
[6.08]: Funeral March [7.39]1
Parsifal (1882): Prelude [13.07]2
Wesendonck Lieder (1856) [21.50]3
Siegfried Idyll (1870) [17.51]2
