WAGNER. Der Ring des Nibelungen- complete.

DAS RHEINGOLD.

Wotan Ferdinand Frantz (bar.)

Donner Alfred Poell (bar.)

Froh

Loge Wolfgang winagassen (ten.)

Lorenz Fehenberger (ten.) Ira Malaniuk (sop.)

Fricka Ellsabeth Griimmer (cont.)

Freia Ruth Siewert (cont.)

Erda Gustav Neldlinger (bass)

Alberich Julius Patzak (ten.)

Mime Josef Greindl (bass)

Fasolt Gottiob Frick (bass)

Fafner Sena Jurinac (sop.)

Woglinde Magda Gabory (sop.)

Wellgunde Hilde litissl-MaJdan (m.-sop.)

Flosshilde DIE WALKURE. Wolfgang Windgassen (ten.)

Siegmund Gottiob Frick (bass

Hunding Ferdinand Frantz (bar.

Wotan Hilde Konetzni (sop.

Sieglinde Martha Medi (sop.

Briinnhilde Elsa Cavelti (m.-sop.

Fricka Judith Hellwig (sop.

Helmwige Magda Gabory (sol Gerda Scheyrer (sop.

Ortlinde

Gerhilde Dagmar Sclunedes (sop. Waltraute Olga Bennings (m.-sop.) Siegrune Ira Malaniuk (sop.)

Rossweisse Elsa Cavelti (m.-sop.)

Grimgerde Hilde ROssi-Maylan (m.-sop.)

Schwertleite SIEGFRJED. Ludwig Suthaus (ten.)

Siegfried Ferdinand Frantz (bar.)

Wanderer Julius Patzak (ten.)

Mime Alois Pernerstorfer (bass)

Alberich Josef Greindl (bass)

Fafner Rita Streich sop.)

Woodbird Martha MOdl sop.)

Briinnhilde Margarete Klose sop.)

Erda GOTTERDAMMERUNG. Ludwig Suthaus (ten.) Siegfried Alfred Poell (ball Gunther Josef Greindl (bass Hagen Midi di (sop. Brithrihilde Sena Jurinac (sop.)

Gutrune Margarete Klose (sop.)

Waltraute Margarete Klose (sop.)

First Nom hide Riissl-Majdan (m.-sop.)

Second Norn Sena Jurinac (sop.)

Third Nom Alois Pernerstorfer (bass)

Alberich Sena Jurinac (sop.

Woglinde Magda Gabory (sop. Wellgunde Hilde Riissl-Majdan (m.-sop. Flosshilde RAI Rome Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Wilhelm Furtwiingler. HMV Q RLS702 (18 records, nas, k18.90). Notes, texts and translations included. Recorded October-November 1953 by arrangement with SACIS on behalf of RAI-Radiotelevisione Ita.liana.

I won't mince words, but say straightaway that the Ring is the supreme large-scale musical achievement of the human mind, that Furtwangler has been the greatest conductor of the work over the last sixty years, and that this HMV box of records is therefore the gramophone event of the century.

Before any gramophile seizes pen and paper to write a strongly-worded protest against this categorical statement, I'd better stress that the phrase I've used is "gramophone event". The gramophone achievement of the century, surely, is the Decca recording of Wagner's work, in which Georg Solti, John Culshaw and Gordon Parry collaborated—the first-ever and truly magnificent gramophonic presentation of the Ring. The DGG recording, master-minded by Herbert von Karajan, came second of course; this month it's issued as a complete entity (as the Decca has been), and in my opinion, despite its many virtues (referred to below), it does in fact come second to the Decca. [The cast details can be found on page 552—Ed.] Actually, the Furtwangler Ring isn't a gramophonic achievement at all, but a radio achievement—except that, since it happened, certain people in EMI have moved heaven and earth to make it permanently available on disc to music-lovers. The whole story is fascinating in itself, so I'd better begin with it.

In 1952, David Bicknell, then the Manager of EMI's International Artists Department, renewed Furtwangler's exclusive contract with the company, and agreed with him that their main task should be to collaborate in a complete recording of the Ring with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. So EMI hoped to be first in the field with a complete recording of the Ring, and would have been, but for fate. They began with Die Walkiire, which was completed in October 1954, was first issued in September 1955 on HMV mono ALP125761, later reissued as HQM1019-23 (4/66) and only recently deleted. Furtwdngler was so pleased with it that he said, "Now let us finish the other operas as soon as possible". But eight weeks later he died ; and it seemed that his incomparable interpretation of the whole Ring had gone with him to the grave —or rather, was evaporating into the cosmos, in soundwaves progressing to an infinite faintness.

However, the previot...; year, Furtwangler had recorded the Ring complete for Rome Radio; and after his death, it was realised that this radio tape was the only preserved recording of his interpretation of the whole work. Immediately, negotiations began between EMI and Radio Italiana, with a view to issuing the recording commercially; but nothing came of it, since two of the singers on the tape had exclusive contracts with a rival record company, which refused to waive them. It was only in the late nineteen-sixties, after continued pleas from Furtwangler's widow and the formation of the Wilhelm Furtwangler Society (founded in 1967, partly to recover every existing recording made by him), that negotiations began again and resulted in an agreement that EMI should issue the performance on disc—the last major project of David Bicknell before his retirement last year. The discs have been made from copy tapes prepared in Italy from the metal positives held in RAI Archives; and since the sound, after so many years, was of variable quality, the EMI engineers have had to work hard to produce a uniform and satisfactory sound. I can only congratulate them on the result, which is remarkably vivid for a recording made in 1953. [David Bicknell writes about the Ring on p. 461 of this issue —Ed.]

It must by now be obvious that we have here something very different from the Decca and DGG recordings of the Ring— something denied all the latest technological refinements of stereo, and indeed something conceived from a different point of view altogether, especially in view of the way the Rome Radio sessions were organised. They were in fact not sessions at all, but concert performances pre-recorded before an invited audience in the radio's studio; and after Day Rhein gold, the other three operas were given an act at a time, with a few days rest between them (eventually, of course, they were broadcast an opera at a time, on four separate evenings, in the normal way). This method had the advantage that, for radio, the singers were not tired when they

Left to right: Ferdinand Frantz, Magda Gabory, Ruth Siewert, Hilde ROssl-Majdan, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Ira Malaniuk after the concert performance of "Das Rheingold" in Rome on October 26th, 1953. [photo: EMI came to the final act of an opera; and it must have appealed greatly to Furtwangler, who distrusted the gramophone record, with its artificial perfectionism achieved by amalgamating the best elements of many 'takes'. The result was simply a recording of an actual live performance before an audience, faults and all, without any 'retakes' (though apparently FurtwAngler decided whether to accept the performance or the final rehearsal of any particular day).

This is itself, for those who (like me) feel as Furtwangler did, a tremendous advantage: it means that we have a spontaneous, living, public performance from beginning to end, instead of a skilful amalgamation of the best bits of several attempts, a passage at a time, made in the laboratory of a recording studio. But of course there are attendant disadvantages, the primary one being that, like nearly any live performance, it contained defects of detail, and once the recording of it was there, nothing could then be done about them. Originally, of course, this didn't matter, since it was a radio recording, to be broadcast as a performance, once or twice, to different audiences in Italy; but now that it's a set of gramophone records, such defects can irritate the listener who plays the recording over and over again. Luckily, the defects, although there are quite a few, are of the subsidiary kind, most of which would pass unnoticed by anyone who is not following carefully with a score— slightly wrong entries, vocal and instrumental, which do not disturb the harmonic flow (two brief moments when a bit of vocal line is delivered a semitone flat are another matter). There is, however, another disadvantage, of a kind which has nothing to do with the question of a live performance: the orchestra is not (alas!) the Vienna Philharmonic, but the Rome Radio Orchestra, and the playing is hardly of the superlative order; all the same, there is only one really upsetting moment—a rather nasty delivery of the quiet solo trumpet line in the orchestral epilogue to Hagen's Watch-Song. Actually, it's quite surprising how generally secure the orchestral playing is, for a live performance of music with which the players were anything but familiar. And perhaps even more surprising is the fact that Furtwangler managed to hypnotise them into responding with the unmistakable Furtwangler style.

There are two other points to consider— the presence of an audience, and the actual balance of voices and orchestra achieved by the Italian Radio engineers. Although the HMV booklet assures us that each member of the audience was only admitted on the condition that he didn't have a cold, there are quite a number of extraneous noises during the performance; fortunately, they are almost all quite faint, the one unhappy exception being an unsuccessfully stifled sneeze covering one note of the hushed bass clarinet solo just before Briinnhilde begins her self-justification to Wotan in Act 3 of Die Walkiire. As regards the engineers' balance, the orchestra tends to be favoured at the expense of the voices— though with a Furtwangler performance this is a fault on the right side; and in fact the sound, both orchestral and vocal, is very near, so that, even in the loudest passages, the voices do come through. And no one need fear any vagueness or muzziness: for a recording made in 1953, which had to be refurbished, the impact of the music comes across loud and clear, though the acoustic is rather dead, the dynamic range inevitably limited, and the tutti passages a little congested.

In view of this, clearly, there's no competition at all between this HMV box of the Ring and those of Decca and DGG: the listener must not expect absolute perfection in performance or any of the spatial effects of stereo (though there is an occasional attempt at realism, as for example in the setting back of the voice of the Woodbird). However, to be able to buy a recording of the Ring, conducted by Furtwangler, for L18.90—compared with one conducted by Karajan at L30.00, or one conducted by Solti at L38.00—is quite something. And indeed, for the musician, as opposed to the hi-fl enthusiast, the above defects are nothing compared with the opportunity to have a recording of Furtwdngler's interpretation of the Ring. What is so special about it? Haven't we got Solti and Karajan ? Well yes, but again it isn't really a matter of competition. Solti and Karajan, in their very different ways, are outstanding Wagner conductors, but Furtwangler was unique, in his many-sidedness. Today, conductors tend to take a special, personal view of Wagner: we have heard of Solti's "ecstatic dynamism" and of Karajan's view of the work as "a lyrical cosmos". But—to drop into the idiom of Hans Keller for a morhent—the one, with all respect, does not exclude the other. Furtwdngler is ecstatically dynamic (without needing to whip up the tempo all the time, like Solti), and cosmically lyrical (without needing to smooth and sweeten as much of the score as possible, like Karajan). And he is more than this: he penetrates, quite simply and without sophistication or affectation, to the majesty, nobility and profundity of Wagner's music. He is, in fact, unself-consciously the servant of the music—a virtue very rare in our selfconscious, self-assertive age. I am not trying to knock Solti or Karajan : I find a burning sincerity in Solti's interpretation of the Ring, and I can only marvel at Karajan's infallible realisation of the beauty of the work's texture. But given the specialised view of each of these two conductors, something has to go by the board somewhere—and especially with Karajan. His recordings of the four works are based on the performances which he himself more or less produced at the Salzburg Easter Festival; and one has the impression of one of those personal re-creations of classical stageworks that we get so often in the spoken theatre today—the shift of emphasis given to Shakespeare's plays by such producers as Zeffirelli and Jonathan Miller. His influence is manifest in the often quiet delivery of the singers, and in their Liederlike sensitivity to the words, which of course goes along with his own scaling-down and beautifying of as much of the score as possible; and the result is curiously contemporary and unWagnerian. In a way, the very casting is significant: his choice of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the Wotan of Dos Rheingold is a strange one, but this Wotan is more like a rising young executive of our own time, caught between his shrewish wife ( Josephine Veasey's Fricka) and a couple of hard-line trade unionists (the two giantsMartti Talvela's Fasolt and Karl Ridderbusch's Fafner), and trying to keep his temper in check. One can almost see him, hands behind back, rocking forward on his toes, mainly managing to suppress his anger behind polite but clipped speech. Karajan's interpretation is full of things like this—and fascinating they are, too; but somehow Wagner's actual characters seem to have vanished. From a purely musical point of view, some of the orchestral pianissimo is vastly overdone, and so is a lot of the quieter singing of the cast—one can hardly hear Thomas Stewart's Wotan when he begins his narration to Briinnhilde in Act 2 of Die Walkiire—and all this is aided and abetted, no doubt on Karajan's instructions, by the DGG engineers. To put it plainly, the dynamic range of the DGG recording is too wide for average domestic listening conditions : once you've raised your volume control sufficiently to hear the quieter passages, you have to turn it down again smartly for the very loud ones. In so far as the Ring could be handled in a sophisticated way, it is here; though naturally, in things like the Ride of the Valkyries, Siegfried's Funeral March and the final holocaust, Karajan has to give the work its head and very powerfully he does it, too.

Solti's approach is much more traditional. One can recognise every one of Wagner's characters as what he was intended to be, and, according to his own lights, Solti brings out to the full the violent emotional quality of the work. The one questionable feature is his tendency to drive ahead whenever the emotion reaches a certain point of intensity, and sometimes when it does not. Solti has gone on record as saying that although Furtwangler was, of course, a tremendous conductor of Wagner, a different, more dynamic approach is necessary today; but it is a mistake to equate dynamism with speed. For example, Solti begins the storm-music which opens Die Walkiire at a tremendous pace (before slowing down, surprisingly, to a much steadier tempo), but the result is that he loses the dynamism of the pounding crotchets in the bass, which, when taken at a less hectic tempo, as by Furtwangler, create a much greater dramatic intensity owing to the fact that every one of them can be heard making its separate mark. Other examples are the swift quavers in two-four time which Wagner used to portray Siegfried's anger with Mime—at Solti's very fast tempo they have great impetuosity but no real weight— and the prelude to Act 3 of Siegfried where, in spite of the general atmosphere of excitement, the figure portraying the gallop of Wotan's horse becomes merely an agitated accompaniment of no particular significance. And sometimes the tempo is too fast to allow the singers to shape their vocal lines properly, as at the end of the love-duet for Siegfried and Briinnhilde in the Prelude to GiitterdOmmerung, where Briinnhil de's descending phrase to the words "Heil, strahlendes Leben! Heil, siegendes Licht!" becomes a kind of glissando rather than a sequence of eight separate notes. Indeed, Solti rarely tries to accommodate the awkward passages for the singers, as both Furtwangler and Karajan nearly always do.

The superlative quality of Furtwangler's interpretation resides in his awareness that the Ring is not in any sense a beautiful and sophisticated work, a la Karajan, or a frenetically violent work, a la Solti, but a stark, heavy, brooding work, a profound tragedy set in a primitive world of ancient Teutonic gods and heroes, to whom every action and event is of the utmost existential importance—a la Wagner. And it should not be thought that this awareness translates itself into an interpretation purely by means of adopting slower tempi: for instance, Furtwangler's prelude to Act 2 of Die Walkiire is taken at the same driving speed as that of Solti, but it is even more gripping because of the weight he brings to bear on the music at that tempo. But the most remarkable thing about Furtwangler's interpretation is the way he brings out the meaning of every detail of the score, a good example being the very first scene of Das Rheingold. Here the tempo is actually slower than those of Solti and Karajan, and it serves to give a lovely lazy lilt to the music of the Rhinemaidens (who after all are supposed to be basking happily in the pleasurable world of unspoilt nature) ; but one realises the full significance of this tempo when the gold lights up and the Rhinemaidens begin their ecstatic song in praise of it, since the flashing scales of semiquavers on the violins make their full impact as the kind of watery vibration Wagner meant them to be, whereas with Solti and Karajan they flash by so quickly that they become no more than a general wash of sound. In purely musical terms, violins cannot properly articulate staccato semiquavers above a certain speed. Again, when Alberich begins climbing up from the lower depths of the Rhine, and gets in a temper because the water sets him sneezing, Furtwángler gives full weight to the vicious little phrase of four descending demisemiquavers and two ascending semiquavers which gives us our first glimpse of Alberich's sadistic nature, and is to return when he starts bullying Mime in the third scene; but with both Solti and Karajan, the tempo is too quick to allow this phrase to register at all clearly.

One could go on giving examples throughout the whole score, but this would be to ignore a more positive and indefinable quality of Furtwangler's interpretation—his ability to make the music surge, or seethe, or melt, so that one has left the world of semiquavers altogether, and is swept up in a great spiritual experience. Furtwdngler himself said: "However vast the scope of a Wagner opera may be, it is still made up of countless individual strands, and only the correct tempo can tie these together. The real task of the conductor—especially in Wagner—is to produce a consistent tempo. There are never 'segments' or rough divisions; everything flows smoothly. Wagner once called himself 'the master of transition', and rightly so". This performance of the Ring is a superb practical demonstration of Furtwangler's theory, since the tempi adopted are so exactly right as to allow every strand of the music to express itself to the full. One has heard the Ring many times, and one feels that one knows just what to expect from the many great peaks of the score; but hearing them again under Furtwdngler—the Descent to Nibelheim, the love-duet in Act 1 of Die Walkiire, the Ride of the Valkyries, Siegfried's forging of the sword, Siegfried's Funeral March, and the closing scene of Giitterdammerung—one realises that there is far more in this music than one has got out of it since one last heard Furtwangler.

The last time I did hear Furtwângler's interpretation of the Ring—the only previous time in fact—was on the BBC's Third Programme in 1950—a broadcast of another Italian Radio recording, made in La Scala, Milan—though I did attend his concert performance of Act 1 of Die Walkgre at the Royal Albert Hall in 1951. The cast of the Milan recording contained the incompar able Flagstad as Briinnhilde and the equally incomparable Ludwig Weber as Fasolt, Hunding, Fafner the dragon, and Hagen; the Wotan, however, was not the incomparable Hotter, but, as on the present recording, Ferdinand Frantz. So we can see that the cast we are faced with, which was chosen by Furtwangler himself, is not an ideal one for its period, as Solti's cast was ideal for the 1960s; though in my view it is largely preferable to the one assembled by Karajan for the DGG recording (1967-70). To begin with Wotan, if Frantz was no Hotter (and I agree entirely with Alec Robertson's lavish praise for Hotter's Wotan on the Decca recording), he had the same kind of deep, authoritative tone of voice so necessary for the character, which Thomas Stewart, in spite of his very fine and subtle singing, so noticeably lacks on the DGG recording. Moreover, Frantz's voice was still in its prime in 1953 as opposed to Hotter's in 1963 and 1966, so that his delivery is always absolutely steady and full-toned; and his characterisation of Wotan is as fine as that of anyone apart from Hotter. It's a pity that Gustav Neidlinger's Alberich, so magnificent on the Decca recording, was only available to Furtwangler for Dos Rheingold, though in fact Neidlinger was not yet at the peak of his powers in 1953, and Alois Pernerstorfer offers an impressive interpretation in Gonerddmmerung and Siegfried. The Briinnhilde of Martha Miidl belongs to a time when Flagstad was pre-eminent, and other singers of the part were in short supply; she was certainly the best of them, and criticism of her performance under Furtwangler has to be levelled, not at her characterisation, but at her vocal style. Her way of approaching notes from underneath, and attacking them with a kind of glottal explosion has irritated many in its time, though I find it a small price to pay for such a moving character-performance and such infallible strength and depth of tone (apart from a high note here and there). There can be no comparison with Birgit Nilsson, of course—nor, to my mind, with Helga Dernesch : the single thing I disagreed with in Alec Robertson's reviews of the Decca and DGG recordings was his not very favourable opinion of her Brannhilde in the DGG Siegfried and GOtterddmmerung. He did say that "with more experience, more variety of tone, more penetration into the soul of the character, added to her already great gifts, Dernesch may well become a great Briinnhilde", but in my opinion she is practically that already. If some of the great phrases, such as "Alles, alles, alles weiss ich" and "Ruhe du Gott" fail to make their full effect, it is at least partly due, I am sure, to Karajan's penchant for getting his singers to scale down their voices as much as possible; and I simply cannot agree that her voice shows any sign of strain towards the end of the final scene of GOtterdiimmerung.

Furtwangler's casting of Wolfgang Windgassen as Siegmund and Ludwig Suthaus as Siegfried seems a strange reversal of roles, since Suthaus had the deep kind of tenor voice so suitable for Siegmund, while Windgassen, as we know, has become the leading Siegfried of the last ten years or so.

In fact, Windgassen sings the part of Siegmund very finely, but he introduces into it, at times, an element of self-pity which is surely quite alien to the character; both James King and Jon Vickers are much more genuinely heroic (and I fully endorse Alec Robertson's view that Vickers is supreme in the 'annunciation of death' scene, with the quiet dignity of his replies to the Valkyrie who has come to tell him of his fate). On the other hand, Suthaus does make a really fine Siegfried, of the true heroic stamp, and is outstanding in his surprisingly delicate delivery of the phrases of the Woodbird in the narration leading up to his death, as well as in the agonised delivery of his dying apostrophe to Briinnhilde; but Windgassen, Thomas and Brilioth all bring out the youthful impetuosity of the character much more successfully. The baritones and basses are all outstanding: the name of Gottlob Frick is sufficient to guarantee the parts of Fafner the giant, and Hunding (and he is in just as fine form as on the Decca recording); Josef Greindl was the same kind of singer of his time, and he brings great power to the parts of Fasolt, Fafner the dragon, and Hagen ; and Alfred Poell makes a splendidly virile Donner, though he is perhaps too virile as the weak and vacillating Gunther. The Decca singers of these parts are equally impressive, especially Frick and FischerDieskau, but those on the DGG recording are less so, with the exception of Thomas Stewart's Gunther, which is much more successful than his Wotan. Again, the name of Sena Jurinac is sufficient to guarantee the parts of Gutrune, the first Rhinemaiden, and the third Norn, and those of Elisabeth Griimmer and Rita Streich to guarantee the parts of Freia and the Woodbird respectively. Where Furtwangler really scores is with his two singers for the part of Erda : Ruth Siewert and Margarete Klose bring that atmosphere of deep mystery which Alec Robertson found lacking in the singers in the other two recordings, and Siewert brings to the Rhein gold Erda's warning to Wotan a really blood-chilling note of menace. Klose also makes a fine Waltraute, though I would not compare her with Christa Ludwig, who sings the part for both Solti and Karajan. Where Furtwangler does not score is in his two singers for the part of Fricka : neither Ira Malaniuk, in Dos Rheingold, nor Elsa Cavelti, in Die Walkilre, has the absolute steadiness of tone necessary for the part, though both, inspired by Furtwdngler, do manage to convey the impression of outraged divinity which Flagstad and Ludwig do so much better for Solti, and which Josephine Vcasey, no doubt influenced by Karajan, tends to ignore in favour of mere wifely contentiousness. In the other important female part, that of Sieglinde, Hilde Konetzni, who was once such an admirable exponent of the part, was not on top form when Furtwangler made his recording and she is definitely outclassed by Regine Crespin (Decca/Solti) and Gundula Janowitz (DGG/Karajan).

Finally, there are what seem to me two cases of miscasting. Windgassen has never had the acuteness and sense of irony to sing the part of Loge, and further, that curious note of self-pity intrudes again when Loge is complaining that he never gets any thanks for what he does—this passage should surely be delivered with cold anger, as it is by Gerhard Stolze for Karajan. The other case of miscasting is that of Julius Patzak as Mime: surprisingly this great dramatic singer, splendidly as he sings the part, misses the vicious malice and pure evil of the character entirely, and presents him merely as a rather unhappy little man, trodden on by everybody, and only too well aware that everything he does is doomed to failure. Here again, the rival singer, at least in Siegfried, is Stolze, on both the Decca and DGG recordings; and his is an absolutely virtuoso performance, if at times it strays dangerously near to the border of caricature.

But except in the case of Patzak, whatever deficiencies in -characterisation (or vocal technique) there may be on Furtwangler's recording, they are not in any way sufficient to impede or weaken his magnificent interpretation; and indeed, nearly all the singers were obviously inspired by his example to rise above themselves, especially in the matter of intensity of characterisation. One final point: the recording is as bass-heavy as the DGG is bass-light, and I found that a bass-cut is as necessary in the one as a bass-boost is in the other. All the same, it should be remembered that Furtwangler himself concentrated very strongly on the bass—especially the cellos and doublebasses, so the bass-cut should not be too extreme. The Decca/Solti version, of course, remains the superlative and practically unapproachable recording. D.C.