RING BEARER
It has taken the genius of Richard Wagner and the ingenuity of a CD label called Rodolphe, out of France, to persuade me to do something I have never done before-write about a specific recording in this column. Ivan Berger first wrote about it in "Spectrum" (September 1988). When, in due course, the discs came to me, ostensibly for a classical music review, I took one look, gasped, and said, "I'm not going to review that!" Does a mouse review an elephant? This pint-sized, CD-shaped box, or cardboard container, no more than a couple of inches-plus from front to back, holds more than 14 hours of music. It contains all four of the enormous Wagner operas of the "Ring" cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen) in a remarkable historic set of performances dating from 1953, out of the famed Bayreuth Festival, then just restored to earlier glory after the Nazi years and WWII. And the sound, after no less than 35 years, is terrific! In more ways than I can count, this album is a symbolic turning point in the audio art of recorded music.
The payoff (rather literally) is the "double-play" feature, engagingly called Doppelspieldauer in German.
Instead of 15 CDs, the music is entirely contained on only seven. It is, of course, mono, and many of us already have decided that what was originally mono should be preserved the same, without the risks of some species of artificial stereo. But why, oh why, didn't somebody think of this obvious system! Just use one CD track at a time; play the disc straight through twice.
First out of one speaker, then the other? Evidently in France, it is not usually possible to send one channel into both speakers, and so Rodolphe provides a little switching box with appropriate RCA jacks and the usual cables for hookups in this country. But all of the mid-priced and high-end equipment I know of can dispense with this easily, including two of my current stereo control centers and maybe a dozen, retired, up in the attic. The music is mono, from only one channel, but comes out of both speakers.
Also included in the little box is what, for a moment, looks like another CD container-a fat booklet of the same size that contains the entire German text, word for word, of all four huge operas. (The words, too, were by Richard Wagner, who regularly did his own-who else could match his lofty genius? He was, of course, absolutely right, as usual.) And so we have maybe a hundred pages of dramatic German, spaced out in two columns and replete with stage directions (also by Wagner). Translations? There, at last, we run into a finite limit! There just isn't room, not even for a brief outline of the complex stories. Nor is there anything about the elaborate musical system of Leitmotivs-catchy themes, bits of tune, harmonies which stand for hundreds of different concepts and which return throughout all four operas as a superb unifying element.
As a matter of fact, you do not need explanations (though plenty have been laboriously written out and printed). The music tells its own story, makes its own associations in the ceaseless flow of the Wagnerian dramatic style. The more you listen, the easier this gets--you'll even know some of the Leitmotivs ahead of time, like the "Ride of the Valkyries" and the "Magic Fire Music." This man was so clever! He doesn't just play these ideas over again; sometimes it is no more than a whiff of sound, a fleeting suggestion; other times he composes whole new music out of them or blows them up to heroic proportions. There are even musical pairs, for opposing ideas, like the inspiring upward-moving brass tones of a C Major chord and its opposite, a yearning, doubt-filled downward string chord of the ninth. Forget the names! Just listen.
I should say quickly that there are other complete recordings of this monster cycle of operas-both later and in stereo. And we have had countless bits and pieces, even whole operas, ever since the electrical 78 brought with it the useful microphone. But somehow this Rodolphe release goes beyond them all, if only in the remarkable circumstances of its format and recording.
As background, a bit about Bayreuth, which may be only a name to you. The Bayreuth tradition is unique because it was in this place that Wagner had his own dream theater built, to house his own operas, after cajoling enough money for the huge expense--mainly out of good King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who also built that white castle in the tourist ads and was a bit dotty.
(Ludwig had a mechanical swan built for himself, too, so he could ride over the water รก la Lohengrin). Cash pledges also came from such distant outposts as America. The operas, all four, were complete by the early 1870s, and the theater opened in 1876 with the first complete performances of the entire cycle (as we have the 1953 cycle on this recording in the very same hall). That effort almost busted the place, which closed for six years, but old Richard, the persistent; was not to be stopped that easily. The Festival was started up again and ran erratically, more or less every two years, with time out for wars, to the present day--well over a hundred years. Where else can you find anything in music like that? Even more, the whole thing remained under Wagner family direction, first his wife, Cosima, then on to son and grandson, for much of that long century and onward. This 1953 production was directed (and inspired, I might say) by the grandson, Wieland Wagner.
Bayreuth, then, is a sort of musical pilgrimage spot, beyond all other festivals, with an aura that has brought every musician who is anybody to the place to show his very best, or hers.
The 1953 production was under Clemens Krauss, one of the finest, and is surely the best he could give. The cast of singers of that year includes, among dozens, plenty of well-known names, some of them still at their best then (and not as good in later recordings), names you might have heard, such as Astrid Varnay, Regina Resnik, Hans Hotter, Wolfgang Windgassen, Ramon Vinay-what is generally called a stellar cast if, as always, not perfection.
(Who can agree on perfection? Certainly not opera fans!) But beyond this is an intensity which is the subject of what might be a mere publicity blurb in the album booklet if it weren't so well illustrated in the performance. After the WWII catastrophe, when the Nazis had turned Richard Wagner into the pompous creature of their thousand-year Reich, Wieland Wagner (the liner notes say) wanted to restore what he felt was the real drama, the intense excitement, and, yes, the passion of these operas as of the pre-Nazi years. It is that very excitement, amplified by the close-up recording techniques of the 1950s, which makes this an overpowering 14 hours of reproduced music! We have never heard such a thing on record before CD-complete, with so few breaks that the tension of the live performance, in all its unbroken pressure, is there--if you can listen.
How do they do it? How can a mere earthly tenor or bass or soprano, depending on sheer breath power, produce such heroic volumes of sound, excruciating high notes, eye-flashing and teeth-grating consonants, astonishingly controlled sobs and groans, on-pitch yells and shouts-for hours without a break? Talk about the Olympics-what about this? Who but old Richard could know ahead of time, on paper, in his head, that it was indeed possible, given the impetus? Possible in his time. still possible today. And now we get to hear it, all of it, in the closest proximity--only a few feet from each singer, it seems, as you listen.
And in such gorgeously recorded sound! How did we do it? The thing you must understand, in this audio challenge to the home/consumer listener, is that Wagner is hypnotic. He cannily depended on an utterly captive audience and on time--outrageous, wearing lengths of it-to reduce you to a sort of will-less human pulp. It is not easy for anyone; it can be extremely unpleasant-even, as I say, an outrageous, buffeting, shocking experience--to sit in a crowded theater through these endless hours of never ceasing, soul-grabbing sound. Sheer, exalted torture.
It is easier at home. Technically, you are not captive at all. Just flip a switch, and all is serene. And quiet. So easy.
Perhaps you'd rather put on some nice, gentle background music? Comfort for the ears as well as the body? Your choice, friends. Take it or leave it.
And yet, there is the challenge. Should you miss a big human experience--frustrating, demanding, hopelessly noisy, and outrageously long (everything in Wagner is outrageous)-but nonetheless real? I should know. I have never been to Bayreuth, but, in the 1930s, I sat "live" at the Met through various big Wagner operas. It was a time of very high performance levels, with such as Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior. One opera at a time, of course. But I got the feeling. It was awful. And sometimes funny. I, too, was reduced to a pulp, a sort of rubbery plasma, though I fought this fiercely. In the middle acts, I simply could not stay awake; in self-defense, I slept. Too much! Too long! But do you think I did not absorb? Richard had me just as securely as ever. Halfway through the final act, I would wake up with a jolt and find myself in a state of total trance-without benefit, thanks, of LSD or other enticement. I would stagger out of the theater, my knees like jelly, my mind in a daze. In a good Wagner performance, there is no way to avoid this.
On the other hand, there were those moments of amusement. It was the era of the great, big opera singer (isn't it still?), and both Flagstad and Melchior were very large. I will not forget the absurd sight of big Melchior climbing laboriously up onto some sort of wobbly table to get at the great sword he had to pull out of a fake oak tree, his enormous legs pale and putty-colored in the traditional high-above-the-knee tights! Some hero. It was all in the voice. With Flagstad, once, it was almost tragedy. In another opera, she stood majestically high on a fake mountain, stage left, and sang for maybe a half-hour-then began to topple.
Phew, the audience groaned aloud, but the great lady righted herself and did not fall.
Flagstad was perfect for Wagner, a visually awesome statue of a woman--so long as she was motionless. In Wagner, the music is full of passion--both from the orchestra and the singers-but visible motion is snail-like, if there is motion at all. Most of that was prescribed (again) by Wagner himself-a gesture here, a step to the right a half-hour later. Maybe I exaggerate but not by much. It is visually static, no matter how gorgeous the sets, and when there is drama, it tends to be clumsy. Rhine maidens swimming in the Rhine? And singing! Just try that for yourself.
All of which points back to the new total experience, Wagner complete and in the home-or the car. But please don't try it in your car. Dangerous. Or incomprehensible. Or both. If you are caught up in the long hypnosis (say, on a cross-continent jaunt), you may find yourself gradually submitting to a very hazardous illusion. You are not on Interstate 80; you see the Rhine ahead of you, glittering and mysterious-and on top of that telephone pole which you are about to hit are three Valkyries in armor with horns on their heads. And I don't mean auto horns.
Stay away from car Wagner.
At home, in the favorite listening seat, it is a different story. You now have a bit of background which you might not have had before, the "ETC" part of "Audio ETC." Next month, I'll fill in the audio part and give you thoughts on the challenge to our whole way of listening at home which this 14-hour recording sets up, as no recording has before. Heil Wagner!
(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY; adapted from Audio magazine, Feb. 1989)
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