PFITZNER. Palestrina—complete.

Pope Pius IV Karl Rldderbusch (bass)

Giovanni Morone Bernd Weikl (bar.)

Cardinal legates of the Pope

Bernardo Novagerio J Herbert Steinbach (ten.)

Cardinal Christoph Madruscht Karl Ridderbusch (bass) Carlo Borromeo, A Roman Cardinal Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (bar.) Cardinal of Lorraine Victor von Halem (bass) Abdisu, Patriarch of Assyria John van Kesteren (ten.)

Anton Bros von Mtiglitz, Archbishop of Prague Peter Meven (bass)

Count Luna, Spokesman for the King of Spain Hermann Prey (bar.) Bishop of Budoja Friedrich Lenz (ten.) Theophilus, Bishop of Imola Adalbert Kraus (ten.) Avosmediano, Bishop of Cadiz Franz Mazura (bass)

Bishop Ercole Severolus, Master of ceremonies Gerd Nienstedt (bass)

Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina Nicolai Gedda (ten.)

Ighino, his son Helen Donath (sop.)

Silla, his pupil Brigitte Fassbaender (cont.)

Lukrezia, his dead wife Renate Freyer (cont.)

Bavarian Radio Chorus, Tkilz Boys' Choir, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Rube- lik. DG 2711 013 (four records, nas, L'10.00). Notes, text and translation included.

Many opera-lovers, particularly in Austria and Germany, show an almost mystical devotion to this dedicated and massive work. Hearing this rich and glowing performance, product of a collaboration between DG and Bavarian Radio on a lavish schedule of two dozen sessions, I can understand why, even while as one of the noninitiated I have my serious doubts. Plainly if the gramophone record is going to do its job, works like Pfitzner's Palestrina should certainly be available. A recording as dedicated as this, superbly performed and recorded, will do more than anything to clear away old prejudices, even while it refreshes the devotion of the Pfitznerians and makes them live less on cloudy, golden memories.

The direct parallel here is in many ways —at least for the record-collector—with an opera that also appeared on record for the first time less than a year ago, Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini. In each the basic subject is the problem of the creative artist in a materialist society; in each the wilfulness of the composer in compassing his theme has led to dramatic problems of enormous magnitude; in each by comparison the medium of a performance on record is entirely apt, putting the problems of staging into perspective against the deeper dramatic concept; in each the subject of the study is an Italian artist of the early renaissance working in very much the same society; in each a Pope appears to resolve the knotty tangle and deliver the hero; in each, as it happens, the recordings present the same massively talented singer in the role of the hero, Nicolai Gedda.

The parallels could be extended further, but I hope that what I have said will be enough to persuade those for whom the records of the Berlioz masterpiece have proved a revelation at least to consider this

Germanic attempt to illustrate the same theme. The converted will need no persuasion of course.

This is the third of Pfitzner's four fulllength operas. The composer described it as "a musical legend", a sort of mystery play. He himself (like Berlioz in his opera) wrote the libretto, finely wrought in every way, though he had never previously counted himself a creator of words. He conceived it as a triptych, with Palestrina's personal conflict confined to the outer acts, and with a centre-piece devoted to an extraordinary re-creation of the Council of Trent with its discussion of the future of polyphonic church music. It was a bold concept to put that long and busy scene of cardinals (and others) wrangling into the centre of the work. For the initiated it is no doubt one of the fascinations of the opera that so improbable a course (with the hero completely excluded from that council scene) should have been adopted. I certainly acknowledge the boldness, also the skill of execution, both of the libretto and of the score, but sadly I have to report the predictable response. Pfitzner, having shown an extraordinary power in Act 1 to bring characters to life in situations that might easily have seemed stiff and stilted, then lets all but one of those living characters (Cardinal Borromeo being the exception) rest in the ice-box, while comparatively uninvolved cardinals argue together. True the cardinals themselves build up a certain interest, but after the sublime final scene of Act 1 (where Palestrina, whose inspiration has been sapped by the death of his wife, is prompted to write the Missa Papae Marcelli), one wants above all to know what happens to him, how the composition of the Mass helps the salvation of polyphonic music. As it is, the discussion in the Council takes no account whatever of the composition of the Mass. Borromeo, who in Act 1 is repulsed by Palestrina, has to report no progress. Curiously in that long scene the actual conflict on the subject of polyphony is minimal, for the anti-polyphonists are given next to no voice. Maybe that is an indication of Pfitzner's own reluctance to face conflict, his preference for following a meditative line. In the final act where all is resolved, the most dramatic event which (according to Pfitzner's legend) affected Palestrina, his consignment to prison, is told merely in narration, a strange avoidance of the key moment.

Pfitzner's dramatic approach was, let us face it, perverse, but then in its way so was Berlioz's in Cellini, and for that matter Peter Maxwell Davies's in another very comparable opera Taverner. In any case on record the obvious course of omitting the second act completely can readily be followed by the listener. I would even suggest that Act 1—substantially the longest at just under two hours, taking four of the eight sides of this set—is really the work that Pfitzner should have left us with. After the cool and spare orchestral prelude, the theme is brilliantly expounded in the opening scene between Palestrina's pupil, Silla (mezzo-soprano) and his son, Ighino (soprano) with Palestrina himself then quickly emerging as a wise mentor, standing between old and new, religious and secular. The atmosphere of Wagner's Nuremburg is very close, but not oppressively so for the soprano/mezzo layout of voices in the opening scene brings its obvious echoes of Rosen/cavalier, even if many of Pfitzner's admirers would count Strauss as an arch opponent. The confrontation between Palestrina and Cardinal Borromeo, who has come to ask Palestrina to write a work for the Council and thereby "save music", brings its lengthy monologue for the Cardinal, but it matches the scale of the act. Palestrina, having angered the Cardinal, has his own long monologue, leading into the key scene where in his mind he talks to the great masters of the past. Rising out of that comes the angel scene where the Mass is actually inspired and composed. Pfitzner then delicately rounds the act off with Silla and Ighino the following morning finding the completed score by the sleeping composer's side. On its own it is a completely satisfying span, a unity that needs no other support or resolution, musically or dramatically.

In idiom Pfitzner owed most of all to Wagner, but it is to the relatively diatonic Wagner of Meistersinger that one turns for comparison, not the Ring. Maybe the surprising thing is that Parsifal is not reflected more frequently. In the culminating scene of Act 3 the Pope's monologue where Pfitzner actually uses words historically attributed to Pope Pius IV, comparing Palestrina with St John the Divine, the Parsifal strain suddenly emerges momentarily, but that is an exception. Pfitzner's idiom with its 'open' perfect fourths and fifths has a purity and a strength which captures one in the face of any associations. His use of leitmotif is deliberately loose compared with Wagner's, and in any case the thematic material (some 33 musical themes illustrated in DG's libretto, unfortunately without name-tags except in the accompanying text) is comparatively subdued. My initial response was that one missed the sheer memorability of Wagner or Strauss themes. I am less certain now, when the broad expanse of the score, its subtle reflection of melodic movement in polyphonic music (most of it by step) seems a necessary part of the whole concept. Nonetheless it may be significant that the most striking melody is the one associated with the Emperor Ferdinand. The listener, having been introduced to that, naturally looks forward to the actual appearance of the Emperor later on (signal no doubt for a magnificent reprise) only to find that the Emperor never does appear— another illustration of Pfitzner's curious shyness in dramatic matters.

As I reported last April (page 1851), I attended three of the recording sessions in Munich. It is specially apt that the recording should have taken place in that city, where the opera has been consistently performed and where the Pfitzner cult has been cherished most warmly. In my account of the sessions I mentioned that the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra had never actually performed in the opera before, but plainly many of these Munich musicians had individually taken part in performances, or at least been initiated in live performances. Kubelik himself had never conducted the opera before, but from his boyhood, from the time when Bruno Walter, conductor of the first performance, had visited his father, Jan Kubelik, at the time of that premiere, he knew and loved the score. It is that sense of communion established by the conductor and orchestra that above all makes this a recorded performance to cherish. From beginning to end one feels oneself in safe hands. My only reservation concerns the angel scene, where Kubelik and his players do not quite rise to the sublimity of the vision. But then maybe the composer did not quite fulfil what he aimed at in that presumptuously ambitious scheme, that attempt to add a heavenly gloss to the Missa Papae Marcelli.

As the cast list indicates the solo singers present the strongest possible team. Gedda had never previously sung in a complete performance of the opera, but in New York under the baton of Henry Lewis he sang in a concert performance of the end of Act 1 from the composer's monologue onwards. His is a powerful performance, reinforcing one's impressions from his singing in Benvenuto Cellini. He is dramatic and always intelligent. If pure beauty of tone is rarely achieved, that is partly a reflection of the music. Similarly Fischer-Dieskau's performance in the role of Cardinal Borromeo concentrates on making the character convincing. In some ways this is the best part of all, for Borromeo actually has responses before one's eyes, grows angry having failed to persuade Palestrina to write the Mass, falls on his knees in gratitude before the composer in the final act, when the cause of polyphony has been saved. There you have a tender human reconciliation illustrated, the relationship between prelate and composer an unlikely and touching one, and I am only sorry that Pfitzner did not underline the moment of final resolution a little more strongly.

The relationship between Silla and Ighino is touched in very convincingly in the opening scene of the whole opera, and from that develops naturally the relationship between them both and the composer. But it seems strange that Silla should then be excluded from the final act completely, however logical that course should be. Helen Donath and Brigitte Fassbaender sing beautifully throughout, helping significantly to get the whole performance off the ground in that long opening scene before Palestrina himself enters. Lukrezia, Palestrina's wife, appears only in a vision towards the end of Act 1, and with Renate Freyer a somewhat unsteady exponent of the role one is slightly relieved that the actual ghost appears no more, even if her theme does.

The nine masters of music double with the cardinals and other contributors to Act 2. I confess that the vision scene where the masters appear before Palestrina emerges as somewhat static, and the individual contributions of the nine singers amount to no more than a choral effort, hardly enough to justify so distinguished a nonet. In the second act of course they appear as individuals, with Hermann Prey outstanding as Count Luna, spokesman for the King of Spain, Karl Ridderbusch as the strong Cardinal Madruscht, Herbert Steinbach as the devious legate Novagerio and John van Kesteren as the exotically characterful Abdisu, Patriarch of Assyria. A very strong team altogether.

In summarising the impact of this ambitious set I have not tried to minimise my reservations. I shall go back to it eagerly when the pressures of reviewing are over. Having a libretto with so clean and crisp a translation as Veronica Slater's helps enormously. Though maybe I shall find myself jumping from the end of Side 4 to Side 8 (the last act squeezed on to a single side) I am pleased at last to be able to share what so many musicians whose judgement I respect have been talking about for so many years with light in their eyes. E.G.