Wagner: Gotterdammerung August 4, 1951 ~ Knappertsbusch

Love this! I have waited to hear this for quite a while, and hesitated at the cost. Then, this week: Fantastic early Christmas present for myself! Great performance, in stunningly good mono sound. I have the 1956 M&A Kna Gotterdammerung, and this blows it away performance and soundwise. Culshaw is a magician; not only is the sound great, for once a recording in Bayreuth favors the singers over the orchestra. There are moments in Act 1 Scene 1 when you would swear Hagen and Gunther were singing right into the microphone. They may have been; mic placement for this recording was spot on for vocals. Enunciation is crisp and clear to the point you utterly forget it is mono. There is a "front-to-back" depth that more than makes up for the "left-right" dynamic of stereo. In other words, despite being mono, the sound is dimensional, not flat. Occasionally the orchestral moments are a bit distant (Siegfried's horn during the Rhine journey), but nothing ruinous. The singers are awesome, and Bernd Aldenhoff is my new favorite "mature" Siegfried; he is fantastic! If you love Wagner, or historic recordings, don't miss this! It was worth the exorbitant price! Good thing they only captured this one - the 1951 Ring in its entirety would have been Gotterdammerung to my bank account!

Despite a loss of low frequencies, the recording captures a grand and clearly articulated version of The Ring. The historical context adds to a feeling of fresh rebirth and hope despite the ruins still visible everywhere.

I can't get enough of Act 2 and 3 of this performance, just beautiful, but I still prefer Furtwangler's 1950 Scala and 1953 RAI radio recordings. Gotterdammerung Richard Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (RAI, Rome 1953)

This Götterdämmerung from Bayreuth in 1951 under the direction of Hans Knappertsbusch is legendary for good reasons.What is enlightening to me is that after years of believing the accepted gospel that Kna was 'slow' is to discover that he is NOT.He is grand, stately, monumental, prescient, psychic even, bringing the music alive with his very flexible speed changes and willingness to delve deeply into the darkest places in this music without becoming lugubrious. Kna illuminates! He can also be gossamer-like, as in the scene with his magnificent trio of Rhine Daughters, where he accentuates the harps in the most natural and folkish manner. In the great tragic moments, the Siegfried's funeral march and Brünnhilde's Immolation, he pumps up the cellos and basses and sweeps the listener along on a gorgeous lava-flow of sound.He dares to be so slow, yet the music does not drag. In fact it gives the tired singers a chance to breath! But these singers of his, Astrid Varnay (Brünnhilde), Bernd Aldenhoff (Siegfried) and Ludwig Weber (Hagen) would be difficult to tire from the glorious sounds they make up to the very end of this long opera. Varnay is just plain amazing. She has seemingly unlimited reserves of power in her beautiful, resiny and fruity voice. She never wobbles or shrieks or hits high notes flat. And her words are crystal clear. She can blast out the Immolation and the curse trio in Act II as well as deliver the best coloratura when she tells the assembled guests, again in Act II, that [Siegfried] 'forced me to desire and love him'. She gets every single little note in and sounds a creditable bel canto expert for a few seconds. No one has sung this line as accurately and confidently as she does here.Ludwig Weber was 52 at the time of this recording and still in prime vocal condition. His Hagen is extremely theatrical and solidly sung, evening vocally beautiful at times. There are so many ways to interpret these characters and Weber's more suave yet very dangerous villain is one of the more interesting performances on record. Opposite to the great brutes like Matti Salminen (Janowski) and Aage Haugland. I understand why some are less than enchanted with Bernd Aldenhoff's Siegfried. He goes into overdrive when he's singing loud and high, similar to what Reiner Goldberg does for Levine. Aldenhoff has a beautiful voice, young-sounding, virile and sturdy from top to bottom. He doesn't wobble or bark and his words are very easy to understand. I like him best when he's singing in the lower more baritonal register, as in the scene where he is pretending to be Gunther confronting Brünnhilde at the end of Act I.His death scene is extraordinary in it's intensity and pathos, one of the very finest in my experience, followed by Kna's massive and over-whelming Funeral March.The Gibichung royals have never been better rendered than by Martha Mödl (Gutrune) and Hermann Uhde (Gunther). Mödl is every bit the regal lady as Brünnhilde but, being human, lacks the goddess's subtlety. This is no shrinking violet but a machinating sorceress looking for a man of her 'own'. The spoiled princess who thinks she can buy love.Elisabeth Höngen's Waltraute is up there with the best if not The Best. She was still in top voice in 1951. She is not overly melodramatic, in fact she's very subtle but still unleashes her huge powerful voice to stunning effect. Heinrich Pflanzl makes much of his eerie scene with Hagen, appearing as he does to his son as a nightmare of sorts, urging Hagen to be loyal to the blood line, of the Nibelungen!The Rhine Maidens are sublime, led by what I will go out on a limb and call The Perfect Woglinde of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's. She has the lightness of touch, the intelligence of word-pointing and the vocal power and heft to ride the waves of the louder passages and lead her sisters through the occasional metronomic confusions Kna's often unusual tempi cause some of his cast from time to time.There are a number of disconnects between pit and stage but nothing bad happens because Kna has his finger on the pulse of the proceedings and leads his singers out of any whirlpools and squalls he creates from time to time.There are some ensemble problems in the Norn scene. Nothing gets out of hand with Knappertsbusch's unerring sense of how to avert disaster but only Ira Malaniuk (the Second Norn) comes out unscathed at the end. All three sing very well, though Martha Mödl has an uncomfortable bout of singing out of tune for a few bars. His Norn scene is indeed very slow but not ponderous or boring, just DEEP.The sound is a little rough and ready with a few bad flaws in the original tapes. The worst one on the set I have is at the end of the Immolation. Just as Brünnhilde greets 'Grane, mein Ross!' there is a sudden aural 'bump' and the sound, which was a little distant during most of the Immolation, as if Varnay was stuck upstage (though perfectly audible) suddenly pops in to loud in-your-face immediacy. Unfortunately this also includes a big jump from that point to the last lines in this famous scene. VERY annoying and it ruins the whole build-up for me, but it wasn't the fault of the singers or Kna but the carelessness of Testament in releasing such a blunder. There are no discernible scratches or blemishes on the compact disc so it had to be a problem introduced at source.And this was an expensive set too! But I can't return it now, receipt long gone, so I will just have to suck it up every time I listen to this great and important recording.

This is a cracking performance of Gotterdammerung, arguably the very best available on disc. Knappertsbusch could be a frustrating conductor - on a good day, when he was in the mood, he could be the very best: catch him on an off day and he could be disengaged, uninspired and uninspiring. This was a very good day on the Green Hill. In fact, it seems to have been a very good festival for him as this is the same year as his classic Parsifal. Perhaps it was the adrenalin of the first reopening festival after the war.The cumulative power of this performance is immense from an intensely dark and brooding Norn Scene (with Modl, no less, as a thrilling Third Norn) right through to a towering Immolation with Varnay singing and acting her socks off. As usual, Kna's tempi tend to be slow but, on a good day like this, there is always a sense of purpose, of going somewhere in particular, of holding the long-term structure constantly in view. Take the great arch of Act 2 as an example. Knappertsbusch sees it as a single paragraph from the dark dreamworld of the Alberich/Hagen scene through the raw power of the Summoning of the Vassals, the choral splendours of the arrival of Gunther and Brunnhilde to the keystone of the arch, a white-hot oath-swearing and then down again through a grim and louring vengeance trio to the hollow glamour of the finale. This is Wagner conducting of a very high order.The cast were obviously inspired to give of their best and then some by Kna's conducting and Wieland Wagner's direction. One always admires Varnay for her commitment and emotional intensity, but I sometimes feel I'm making allowances for the voice compared to a Leider, a Flagstad or a Nilsson. Not here. This Brunnhilde is magnificently and beautifully sung. Listen to her in the Dawn Duet for some ravishing notes, daringly and thrillingly taken. This is among the greatest performances of the Gotterdammerung Brunnhilde I know. Hermann Uhde simply is the greatest performance of Gunther I know. As an amazingly complex study of vanity mixed with insecurity, honour with corruption, even a touch of heroism brought down to moral collapse, this is peerless. And Modl, who doubles Gutrune with her Third Norn, makes so much more of his troubled sister than the usual dizzy blonde. The Gibichungs here are a formidable pair. Elisabeth Hongen is a veritable Valkyrie as Waltraute, telling her tale with passion, defending her case with resilience and singing alongside Varnay, both with glorious tone. Weber, superb as Gurnemanz in the same season's Parsifal, is perhaps a touch nice of voice for Hagen compared with the black toned villainy of a Frick or, from an earlier generation, an Andresen or a List. But he had long experience of the part and sings it rather than barking and uses the words to great effect.Which brings me to the one weak link in the cast, Bernd Aldenhoff. He can certainly sing beautifully - but only below top G and below forte. When he drinks the potion in Act 1, for example, he uses a beautifully coloured bit of mezza voce. So too in large parts of the Narration and the Death. But once he opens up, as in the Dawn Duet or the Act 2 oath-taking, the voice comes under strain and takes on an unpleasant rough edge.Despite that, this is a shattering performance. It's a tragedy that contractual hang-ups kept it in the archives for half a century. Now it is available, I would urge any lover of Wagner performance to snap it up. The sound is what you would expect from 1951 - a little edgy and strident in the brass, a bit thin in the violins - but good for its time. Yes the prompter is there - though not as intrusive as on Bohm's Bayreuth set - but he really doesn't detract from this thrilling performance.

Hay grabaciones técnicamente mejores en relación a la parte orquestal. Sin embargo, será difícil o casi imposible encontrar alguna que muestre con tanta fidelidad la peculiaridad del mundo vocal wagneriano. Este Gotterdämmerung es imprescindible.

Eine Aufnahme von Hans Knappertsbusch am Beginn von Neu-Bayreuth? Einfach unverzichtbar! Gibt's auch den ganzen Ring?? Irgendwann?!

There's been parted opinions over this recording since it appeared on CD. I find it one of the very best. Knappertsbusch's conducting has been deemed by some irregular, but who cares, if he draws from the orchestra such energy and passion? The cast is just as irreplaceable: Weber (maybe for the last year of his career) fully masters his singing (and which singing!) as well as his acting (his "watch" really gives the creeps), Mödl and Uhde are the greatest Gibichungen you'll find anywhere, and Varnay's voice still has a youthful hint that will soon disappear after a few more Brünnhildes. Only problem, Aldenhoff as Siegfried is not in the same league, but still compares, for example, to a Jonas Kaufmann. Last but not least: the sound is superb in every respect.

これはもうクナの誰もが認める最高傑作の一つでしょう！葬送行進曲から最後までは聞きごたえがあります。（涙！）

1999年この盤を新品で入手、当初はテンポがやや遅いと思い聴いていました。が、今クナテンポに慣れたのか、ちょうどいいです。(事情で紛失のため中古でこちらで再度購入)ヴァルナイ、ウェーバー、アルデンホフ、ウーデのグンター等が素晴らしい。50年代の歌手陣は最強。モノラルですが全く気になりませんでした。(クナのワーグナーとブルックナーは私にとっては神棚行きです)