Classical Music

Schubert: Piano Trio no 2 in E flat major recorded 10/1951 in monophonic.
Busch: Divertimento for 13 Instruments, recorded 08/1982 in stereo.

Ton Koopman, great Dutch organist and harpsichordist sublimating the baroque scene for five decades, here delivers us an overview of the Great Organ (Robert Cliquot/ Julien Tribuot, 1710) of the Royal Chapel of Versailles, inaugurating our collection “L'Âge d'Or de l'Orgue Français” (the Golden Age of French Organ). An anthology of the possibilities of this purely “French style” instrument, here are the two great Suites of Clérambaut, published the same year as the inauguration of the instrument, majestic pieces of Louis and François Couperin, masters of colors, of Daquin’s Christmas Music full of sap, and even a Bach Choral! A Master Organist makes a resounding tribute to the symbolic instrument wanted for his Chapel by Louis XIV.

The recordings on this release are all world premieres, apart from the Suite, Op.11 by Feinberg, which was recorded by the composer himself in 1929. There is no direct connection between the two twentieth century composers, Samuil Feinberg and Hans (Hanu�) Winterberg, one a citizen of Russia and the Soviet Union; the other a decade his junior, of Czechoslovakia and Bavarian Germany. However, they are both among those composers abandoned by history despite the intrinsic merits of their work. The oblivion to which Winterberg was consigned was effectively total, held hostage to a posthumous embargo to which part of his family acceded, until his grandson initiated his rediscovery in 2015. By contrast, Feinberg had at least garnered admiration during his lifetime, and since, for his prowess as pianist and teacher. Both composed in their own very individual idioms, though sometimes making little concession to the listener or to the technical demands placed on the performer. As things have turned out, Christophe Sirodeau has been able to contribute to the salvaging of two works of these composers by editing and preparing their "lost and found" manuscripts for publication (with minimal editorial revisions required for performance), in addition to actually playing and recording them, of course! This sense of discovery of a lost world of music, and of revealing the character of it's creators is the impetus behind the programme of this album.

Two rival yet similar works, an illustration of a "Quarrel of the Te Deums", a true war of mottled violin scores, a frivolous echo of Louis XV's final victories. It is also the rediscovery of two of the most talented composers amongst Rameau's contemporaries, Fran�ois Colin de Blamont and Esprit Joseph Antoine Blanchard. Daniel Cuiller appropriates this music with the voracity which had led him to revive a previous Te Deum, on that occasion by Henri Madin, and which was covered with praise. Add to this the brilliant singers of the Marguerite Louise choir which is directed by Ga�tan Jarry and the virtuoso musicians of Stradivaria, Daniel replied with enthusiasm to this "commission" for the Royal Chapel of Versailles.

TEN HOLT Canto Ostinato. Natalon in E . Aforisme II. Solo Devil’s Dances I–IV. Eadem Sed Aliter • Jeroen van Veen (pn) • BRILLIANT 9434 (5 CDs: 320:09)


This set is designated as Simeon ten Holt: Solo Piano Music Volumes I-V , so one assumes that another release will follow it in due course. This is good news to those of us who have been bitten by the ten Holt bug, and who are snapping up every release that becomes available. In the United States, the situation is now much better than it was just a few years ago, and it is better, in large part, due to the efforts of pianist Jeroen van Veen (and Brilliant Classics), who, with colleague pianists, and by himself, has been busily recording ten Holt’s often mammoth works for one or multiple pianos. He is not the only world-class pianist to be interested in ten Holt’s music, however, but we will get to that point later.


In Fanfare 35:6, I had a lot to say about Canto Ostinato , albeit in a performance by two pianists, namely van Veen and his wife, Sandra. This was included in van Veen’s Minimal Piano Collection, Volumes X-XX set (Brilliant Classics 9171). I’m going to beg the editor’s indulgence by repeating all of it here:


Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato , [is] an even more large-scale classic that occupied the composer between 1976 and 1979, and a work that has attained a fair measure of popularity, at least in Europe. (I think its time will come in the United States; all it needs is the right set of circumstances.) Like several of ten Holt’s works, Canto Ostinato gives its performers plenty of flexibility. The score states the composer’s preference for performances with four pianos, but he has enthusiastically endorsed Jeroen and Sandra van Veen’s two-piano realization presented here, and it also has been performed with twelve pianists on five pianos! (Other keyboard instruments are possible too.) The score has 106 sections. Performers can use their own discretion concerning dynamics, articulation, the number of repetitions, and the use and combination of alternative parts. It can last for a half hour or longer than two. The composer writes, “A performance of Canto is more like a ritual than a concert. The piece is not in a hurry.” For me, three factors lend the work its peculiar magic. The first is related to rhythm. Each bar is in 10/16 time, overlaid with 2/4 to create two groups of 5/16. Each “quintuplet” is subdivided into 2+3 or 3+2. What this creates, in the listener, is the curiously dance-like sensation of even unevenness, if you will. The second factor is melodic. At first, there is no melody, in the usual sense of the word. However, over time, an angelic “canto” starts to coalesce, like a picture puzzle slowly coming together. When this “canto,” after many teasing minutes of development, reaches its maturity, the cumulative effect, if you have been paying attention, is literally awesome. (I never fail to weep when I get to section 74 of Canto Ostinato , and I have had a similar experience with Meandres , a ten Holt composition from 20 years later.) Having attained seeming Nirvana, ten Holt (or the performers), then evolves away from it almost immediately, and so Canto Ostinato , on this level, becomes a piece about expectation, and not just achievement but also frustration. It’s a very Zen experience. The third factor is related to community. A successful performance of Canto Ostinato depends upon communication and coordination among the performers. One senses (in the present performance, and in others I have heard) that a sort of hive mentality is at work, or that one is listening, not just to a ritual, but to a biological process. Much as I love music, I would rarely describe it as organic. For me, there are two prominent exceptions, though: some of Sibelius, and all of Simeon ten Holt.


Of course, the present recording, which dates from the fall of 2012 (like everything else in this collection), removes the third factor enumerated above because all of these are solo performances. I think I understand ten Holt’s preference for performances, at least of Canto Ostinato , involving multiple pianos. Played solo, the music remains highly effective, but the ineffable and moving sense of community is absent here. Otherwise, it is striking how similar this new solo recording of Canto is to the one by van Veen and his wife in the Minimal Piano Collection set. The total timing (78:15) is just a minute shorter than its predecessor, and isn’t it convenient that it all fits on one CD? (A four-piano version recorded in the ’80s and released by Composer’s Voice/Donemus lasts over 150 minutes and requires three discs, and let me tell you, those disc-changes are a real letdown!) There’s no sense that the music’s development is being rushed, but I think, generally speaking, the more performers one has, the longer it takes to perform it effectively. In a review of piano music by Philip Glass (also in this issue), I commented that van Veen was a more subjective performer than the composer himself. In ten Holt’s music, however, I find that van Veen is less personal—which I suppose is another way of saying less romantic—than other pianists who have recorded it, namely Ivo Janssen (on Void), and on the aforementioned three-CD extravaganza, Gerard Bouwhuis, Gene Carl, Cees van Zeeland, and Arielle Vernède. Still, I have every reason to believe that van Veen’s playing realizes the composer’s intentions completely.


So, where this new release really comes into its own is in the remaining four discs, because this is great music too, and there is less competition. (In some cases, I think, there is none at all, at least on disc.) Solo Devil’s Dance I was composed in 1959 and lasts only 4:10. The remaining three works in this series are much later (1986, 1990, and 1998, respectively) and much longer too: 67:43, 45:55, and 38:41. The first is an etude whose basis is an essentially unrelenting triple rhythm passed from one hand to the other, with a—well, impish counterpoint. No surprise: It sounds utterly unlike anything else on these discs, but one can sense the presence of ten Holt’s mind, even if one can’t exactly hear ten Holt’s voice. With the second, we are back in familiar, i.e., minimalist, territory. An odd, nervous rhythm and a melodic pattern are quickly established, and over the course of 67 minutes it is developed. With Philip Glass, one senses that his favorite geometric shape is a square. Ten Holt, on the other hand, probably was enamored of pentagons and heptagons. Solo Devil’s Dance II is jazzy, without ever turning into jazz, and eternally unsettled. As in Canto , tension rises, is dissipated, and rises again; Glass is rarely this dramatic. It sounds like a terrible finger-buster for any pianist, but I imagine stamina and concentration are even bigger issues. Fortunately, listeners don’t have to fear for the fingers. If they are receptive, their concentration should be stimulated by the ever changing but always the same landscape of shifting accents, phrase lengths, and by each new section of the score (there are 111!) in which a new puzzle piece, or a new clue (if you will) is added. Kees Wieringa’s version of this work can be downloaded as an mp3 from Amazon. I haven’t heard more than an excerpt—I have yet to feel that downloaded mp3s are worth my time and money, so any comparisons I make with mp3s in this review are based solely on brief excerpts—but for what it’s worth, Wieringa’s version is only 28 seconds longer. Ivo Janssen’s mp3 is only half as long, and is a little slower.


Solo Devil’s Dance III is built on similar plans, but it strikes me as a more genial piece. If its predecessor is obsessive, it is cheerfully industrious, as if one were overlooking a sort of musical factory in which the workers are notes and their products are phrases and successively larger musical structures. The music burbles along happily, and it really does seem to dance. One wonders if the melodic material’s resemblance, at times, to Till’s theme from Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche was accidental. Otherwise, there is nothing demonic here! In fact, extended sections in the piano’s stratosphere suggest fairies, perhaps from A Midsummer Night’s Dream , more than anything horned. Wieringa’s mp3 is almost 20 minutes shorter, as he moves through the work’s 77 (!) sections!


What makes the Solo Devil’s Dances demonic, perhaps, is the demands that they place on the performer. (Van Veen is certainly up to their various challenges.) An additional demonic element that appears in Solo Devil’s Dance IV is a fixation with the interval of a tritone, the “diabolus in musica.” This piece is a particularly cruel task for the pianist, as it is fast, lengthy, and more intricate in its patterning than its predecessors. If Solo Devil’s Dance II is obsessive, this last member of the family carries obsession to its most driven extremes. It’s an etude from hell. At 18: 14, Ivo Janssen’s mp3 of this work is only half the length of van Veen’s performance, and he adopts a somewhat slower tempo, so clearly he takes fewer repeats than van Veen. (As I mentioned above, in my description of Canto , ten Holt’s scores generally give performers a lot of latitude.) This work contains 89 “separate musical objects,” which I suppose is just another way of indicating “sections.” This was ten Holt’s final work, although he did not die until 2012.


Earlier, I used the phrase, “ever changing but always the same.” That is a rough English translation of the Latin phrase Eadem Sed Aliter , the title of a work in 113 sections from 1995 also included in this collection. To quote from the booklet note (van Veen’s?), “the left hand is shifted two sixteenths from the right hand—this creates a big challenge for the thumbs of both hands, like in the music of Franz Liszt where the thumbs were first used to play melodies. The ping-pong-style playing with accents, together with building layers (getting louder and softer), turn this into an interesting piece.” The music has a plaintive quality, as if it were begging to be released from its unceasing activity and lack of resolution (harmonic and otherwise). As with the other works in this collection, I can’t even begin to imagine the endurance and concentration required to perform it, and van Veen has both my admiration and my sympathy! An mp3 by Janssen is a few minutes shorter (33: 49), and in this work, his tempo is even faster than van Veen’s. Madness!


The two remaining works date from the 1970s. Aforisme II (1974) is receiving its first recording here. It is, in a sense, the seed that produced Canto Ostinato , as it is a 6/8 version of the Canto melody, with an accompaniment of broken chords (imagine a barcarolle.) The Chopinesque bit of sweetness is just four minutes long, and, if a score were to be published, I predict it would quickly appear on every third teenage piano student’s recital. Natalon in E also is atypical. There are five movements in contrasting tempos and moods, and ranging from four to 11 minutes in length. The material in each movement is characteristic of ten Holt, but its development is far more concise. Like Aforisme II , this is ten Holt “lite,” although I don’t mean to denigrate it with that adjective, only to imply that it is more accessible to performers and listeners who might not generally be interested in Minimalism or “contemporary music,” whatever that is.


The booklet contains, in addition to unsigned notes about some (not all, unfortunately) of the works, a short essay about the composer himself, and about van Veen as an interpreter of his music. This originally appeared in Fanfare 33:5 and is written by Alan Swanson, who took advantage of the opportunity to bang the drum for ten Holt before I did. I’m glad he did. Since I discovered it a few years ago, Simeon ten Holt’s music has become important to me; it has given me great intellectual and emotional satisfaction. I am very happy that Jeroen van Veen’s advocacy, not least through these recordings, has made it easier for new audiences to become exposed to it. Please, however you do it, introduce yourself to Simeon ten Holt.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

MOZART: SYMPHONIES 35 & 39 SZ

RACHMANINOV: PIANO CONCERTO NO

This disc is the first in an exciting new collaborative series between Brilliant Classics and the International Barrios Guitar Competition. 2011 First Prize Winner Elise Neumann presents a fine recital of solo guitar works, spanning a period from the 1920s to the 1960s and featuring workings by Barrios, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ponce, and Asencio. Neumann's virtuosic and exquisitely sensitive playing brings a sense of space and light to these selections, showing her to be a star in the making.

The disc features Antal Zalai, praised by Igor Oistrakh as 'an exceptional violinist who has a perfect technique, beautiful large tone, real musical finesse and maturity as well as a noble personality'. Joining him is Jozsef Balog, one of the most celebrated pianists of his generation and winner of the 2005 Annie Fischer Award.

A child wonder who stirred the admiration of the Court, Dandrieu was a virtuoso harpsichordist but above all, organist of the Royal Chapel of Versailles from 1721. He left a corpus of work of a rare inventiveness tracing out the Chapel's most dazzling musical moments under the reign of Louis XV. Here are Magnificats, pieces for Christmas and some splendid hallmark scores that offer snapshots of the liturgical art of the King's Organist at the height of the French baroque. Dandrieu writes for organ the equal of the harpsichord masterpieces of his time. Jean-Baptiste Robin, organist of the Royal Chapel of Versailles, makes the Great Organ ring with majesty, thanks to a decade of close familiarity with this historic instrument.

Mazarin managed to sign the Treaty of Paris which validates the future Peace of the Pyrenees, and therefore the marriage of Louis XIV with the Infanta of Spain in 1660. In the context of these celebrations, the French ambassador in Venice, commissions a mass from Cavalli the greatest composer of his time. He thus composed this sumptuous Missa performed in January 1660 in the Basilica of San Giovanni e Paolo and brought together the best voices and most famous musicians around viols, violins, cornets and trumpets in a spatialization in the Venetian custom. In this recording, Benjamin Ch�nier takes on this chef d'oeuvre which celebrates France and Louis XIV with brilliant soloists and a strategy of spatialization in the Royal Chapel which recreates the splendid sound of 1660.

Charpentier was Lully and Lalandes’ equal for the exceptional quality of his music. For the Duchess of Guise he created works of infinite beauty, which Louis XIV particularly admired, including the Idylle en musique Les Arts Florissans (1685). Gaétan Jarry and his young musicians give back living vitality to this allegory of the artistic golden age of the “greatest king of the world” who had just settled his court in Versailles, With himself in the guise of Apollo or as the Sun King. Founded in 2007, the Marguerite Louise ensemble is made up of passionate musicians from a variety of backgrounds, from leading schools (CNSM in Paris, CNSM in Lyon, Conservatoire in Amsterdam, Center for Baroque Music in Versailles, Schola Cantorum in Basel) or already performing with prestigious ensembles (Les Arts Florissants, the Elements, the Spiritual Concert, the Concert d'Astrée). All seek to revive these little motets very intimate, quite symptomatic of the piety of the Sun King and his court at the end of the "Grand Siècle".

The performance of Duruflé's transcription for 2 organs of Handel's 8th Organ Concerto is a tour de force. Mere words become woefully irrelevant.

Originally recorded in 1967 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, this release projects, among other virtues, a tangible sense of occasion. The shrine's two organs had been installed and dedicated in 1965, but the Duruflés' recital of two years later was the first to utilize both instruments simultaneously, in Marcel Duruflé's transcription for two organs of the eighth of Handel's 16 concertos for organ and orchestra. That was, by the evidence on this release, a performance tour de force. The two instruments (the great and the chancel organ) are separated by a distance of some 300 feet, a virtual city block. The Duruflés overcame that vast and vastly disorienting sonic space by resorting to the sounds transmitted via telephone headsets rather than those of the acoustic surround. The result is a breathtaking synchronici-ty of attack and release, not merely of purely technical precision, but of musical affect as well.

Clarity and precision, not merely that of getting the right fingers to the right keys and pedals in a timely fashion, but of going, straightaway, to the heart of the musical discourse at hand, inform each track on this release. The little Schumann Canon in B Minor projects a playfulness that underscores its inherent irony. The Tournemire piece (a vast improvisation by that composer subsequently reconstituted by her husband) becomes, appropriately, César Franck on speed. Mme. Duruflé's clear-eyed realization of its every Easter-chant-derived iota converts it into a grippingly human drama, at once horrifying and consoling.

Of the incense-tinged Prelude and Fugue of Marcel Duruflé, I will say nothing. Mere words become woefully irrelevant.

If you've been lulled to sleep by my verbosity, wake up and get this one before it becomes, as is so much of the best that music has to offer, unavailable.

-- William Zagorski, FANFARE [1/2000]

The project "Piano Trimba" by Dominique Ponty (piano) and Stefan Lakatos (trimba), gathering miniatures composed by Moondog during his life, is remarkable for more than one reason. On the one hand, because his performers have known and worked for many years with the composer. On the other hand because this very sensitive recording brings together known pieces and unpublished pieces of Moondog, most of which are dedicated to Dominique. In perfect resonance with the work of Moondog, Dominique and Stefanen are today the most authentic performers. The truly "unheard" character of these works, their faithful interpretation, attentive to every detail, make this record an indispensable testimony to the work of this luminous musician.

Characteristics of Frisina�s work can be found in the lush harmonisation of the choral movement �Psalm 45�, which is undoubtedly a highlight of the recording, and acclaimed Italian soprano Barbara Vignudelli sings the protagonist role, with David Scogna narrating. Organist Lorenzo Macr�, Coro Musicanova and the Nova Amadeus Chamber Orchestra are conducted by Flavio Emilio Scogna. New recording (17 March 2012 Cripta delle Ancelle della Carit�, Rome) by Italian soloists, choir and chamber orchestra, conducted by Flavio Emilio Scogna. Italian composer Marco Frisina (b.1954) sets this tale in a moving and appealing musical language, in the great Italian choral tradition, reaching back as far as Palestrina.

Classical Music

This survey of 20th c. sonatas written for solo guitar, featuring a whopping thirteen world premiere recordings, marks yet another original project from the spirited and adventurous Italian guitarist Cristiano Porqueddu, “a point of reference for the new generation of guitarists”, bringing together a wide range of guitar sonatas by Baev, Biberian, Cavallone, Manén, Migot, Gilardino, Rózsa and Porqueddu himself. It is a journey through wildly differing styles, from Impressionism to Expressionism, from the simple to the complex, from the folkloristic and descriptive to absolute music. Mr. Porqueddu, a prolific Brilliant Classics recording artist, wrote the set’s extensive liner notes, which feature work-by-work descriptions and annotations.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Edward Elgar at Woolsey Hall

TCHAIKOVSKY: ARIAS GHENA DIMI

Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist Bela Bartok is considered to be one of the most important composers of the twentieth century. He and Franz Liszt to this day reign as Hungary’s greatest composers who have ever lived. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which would go on to become ethnomusicology. Some of Bartók’s best-known works are collected on this album. All of them have written music history and decisively influenced classical Modernism. The composition of these works extends from 1927 (String Quartet No. 3) to 1945 (Piano Concerto No. 3).

Wagner's German opera: Tristan und Isolde. Performers include: Ram�n Vinay (Tristan), Astrid Varnay (Isolde), Ludwig Weber (K�nig Marke), Ira Malaniuk (Brang�ne), Gustav Neidlinger (Kurwenal), Hasso Eschert (Melot), Gerhard Stolze (Ein Hirt), Theo Adam (Ein Steuermann), Eugene Tobin (Ein Junger Seemann). Choir & Orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival, Eugen Jochum. Recorded live at Bayreuth in 1953.

WAGNER Tannhäuser • Joseph Keilberth, cond; Ramón Vinay ( Tannhäuser ); Gré Brouwenstijn ( Elisabeth ); Herta Wilfert ( Venus ); Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau ( Wolfram von Eschenbach ); Josef Greindl ( Landgraf Hermann ); Volker Horn ( Shepherd ); Josef Traxel ( Walther von der Vogelweide ); Gerhard Stolze ( Heinrich der Schreiber ); Toni Blankenheim ( Biterolf ); Theo Adam ( Reinmar von Zweter ); Bayreuth Festival O & Ch • ANDROMEDA 5162, mono (3 CDs: 183:10) Live: Bayreuth 7/22/1954


I’d really like to know why so many Wagner lovers have a bee in their bonnet over Josef Keilberth. So often in others’ reviews I read that he was routine, dull, unimaginative, etc., etc., yet I’ve always liked his conducting. Even as far back as my earliest years in college, when I was absorbing the Wagner canon from old LP recordings in the library ( Lohengrin with Steber and Windgassen, Fliegende Holländer with Varnay and Uhde, etc.), I always found Keilberth’s conducting well-paced, beautifully phrased and articulated as well as urgent in dramatic scope, and so I find it here. Even as early as the Overture (the Paris version, so it connects to the Venusberg music), Keilberth sounds as if he’s on a mission, and that mission is to make Tannhäuser’s story as thrilling as is humanly possible.


The problem with this release is the sound quality of the orchestra. I don’t know whether this recording stems from an in-house tape or a broadcast, but whichever it is the orchestral sound is harsh. The strings grate, the brasses spit, and the timpani sound like someone hitting a garbage can with mallets. And yet, this is an improvement over the one previous issue I’ve heard on Melodram, which was actually worse than this: The sound was both grating and muddy. At least Andromeda was able to clarify the sound and remove most of the surface noise, and happily the poor sound only affects the loud orchestral passages (like the Overture and the beginning of act II), not the singing. It should be noted that the cover of this release claims all-new 24-bit remastering, although like so many off-brand reissues of classic broadcasts, it has no libretto.


The only somewhat weak link in the cast is Wilfert as Venus. She is just OK. Her voice is not tonally pretty or very expressive except that she yells a good deal, and as I’ve said many times, yelling is not an interpretation. She also has a weak low range, which makes her descents in the scale disappointing. (Yet later on in the scene, the voice becomes less tense and she actually sings the written trills, something many Venuses ignore.) Vinay takes a while to warm up, sounding clumsy in Tannhäuser’s more elegant lines and lacking ease in singing the turns (mordents) in “Dir töne Lob.” Yes, he was an outstanding actor, both visually (which of course we can’t see here) and vocally, and that helps in many scenes of the opera, but I’d have liked a bit more suavity in the opening scene.


Once we leave the Venusberg, however, things brighten up considerably. A quick look at the cast list explains why. We have not only seasoned veterans Greindl and Traxel as Hermann and Walther and the still-young but already-legendary Fischer-Dieskau as Wolfram, but also several singers who would, within a decade, become important artists in their own right, namely Theo Adam, Toni Blankenheim, and Gerhard Stolze. As an extra bonus we get the great Gré Brouwenstijn who, along with Cristina Deutekom, was God’s gift to the soprano world from the Netherlands during the 20th century, as Elisabeth. (I should also mention that boy soprano Horn as the Shepherd is exceptionally good.) In addition, the microphone placement, which makes the orchestra sound so harsh, seems to be perfect for the voices, which all sound right and natural. As the opera progresses, Vinay’s voice brightens and loosens up a little, which is all to the good. (While listening, I kept trying to figure out whose voice he reminded me of; the closest I could come was Bernd Weikl if Weikl sang tenor.)


In act II, the vocal acting reaches new heights. Seldom have I heard Elisabeth sung with such nuance and attention to detail as she is here by Brouwenstijn; listen to the way she paints the words in “Was war es dann,” for instance, and as opposed to Vinay, her vocal elegance in singing the mordents is flawless. Griendl, who could at times sing with a loose vibrato and unfocused tone (as in his studio recordings of Tristan und Isolde and Die Zauberflöte ), is in excellent voice, particularly in the low range, and his singing in “Gar viel und schön ward hier” is both powerful and well-nuanced. I found it ironic that “Blick’ ich umher,” which is supposed to be sung somewhat clumsily by Wolfram (the reason he loses the song contest to Tannhäuser), is so elegantly and beautifully vocalized by Fischer-Dieskau that it almost sounds as if he were giving a Lieder recital. Yet, all in all, the drama builds during this act more suspensefully than I’ve heard it in any other performance of the opera. It’s absolutely hair-raising.


Happily, the Prelude to act III is recorded much better than most of the other orchestral music, possibly because it is mostly played softly. The Pilgrims’ Chorus, taken by Keilberth at a quicker than normal tempo, may sound a tad glib to seasoned Wagnerians yet it still manages to sound fervent, and Brouwenstijn’s ensuing aria (“Allmächt’ge Jungfrau”) is sung with rapturous feeling. Needless to say, “O du mein holder Abendstern” is sung beautifully, but what’s interesting to me about young Fischer-Dieskau is that it was his low range that was better than later on (a situation that made his mid-1970s recording of Die Meistersinger so disappointing). Vinay’s voice, ironically, sounds even deeper than Wolfram’s (later on in his career, he returned to singing baritone and then even sang bass!), but he is locked into the character here, so his “Rome narrative” is movingly and dramatically sung with full attention to words, and his death scene is indescribably moving.


The bottom line, then, is that if you really love Tannhäuser you need to own this performance. Because of the sound quality and lack of a libretto it’s not a first choice—that plum goes to the Dernesch-Kollo-Braun-Solti stereo set on Decca—but all things being equal, the singers are recorded so well that if you simply ignore the harshness of the purely orchestral passages (particularly the loud ones), you’re in for an extraordinary treat. This was a Wieland Wagner production, and somehow or other he and Keilberth got the whole cast to perform at white heat.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley