Richard WAGNER (1813-1883)
Lohengrin: Prelude, Act I (1845-7) [8.58]
Götterdämmerung: Siegfried's Funeral March (1869-74) [6:52]
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Prelude, Act I (1862-7) [9:34]
Parsifal: Prelude (1878-82) [11:53]
Parsifal: Good Friday Music (1878-82) [13:10]
L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ernest Ansermet
rec. Victoria Hall, Geneva, November 1963
DECCA ELOQUENCE 480 0567 [50:50] 
Your reaction to these performances will depend on whether you can accept
the matching of orchestra and repertoire on aesthetic and technical grounds.
L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Geneva radio orchestra, was a mainstay
of the Decca catalogues, featuring in many of the company's "FFSS"
early-stereo productions. They served up a French sound, bright and clear,
rather than a deep, weighty Germanic one; their "horizontal" phrasing,
based in melody rather than harmony, similarly exemplified the Gallic manner.
Nor were these players the most polished or technically adept. Blend and tuning
within the woodwind choir were erratic, the otherwise solid brass offered
limited lung power. The strings were challenged by busy passages, and extreme
high lines in the violins could be dodgy.
It was Ernest Ansermet, the orchestra's longtime music director, who brought
distinction to the enterprise. An expert interpreter of the French and Russian
repertoire, he was hardly an exponent of Wagner style, but his leadership
was expressive and musically informed. The present performances mostly maintain
a dignified tread and capture the music's impassioned surge and sweep. In
Siegfried's Funeral March and the Parsifal prelude, the comparatively
lightweight sonority produces clear textures, while firm, directional phrasing
and a measure of rhetorical emphasis compensate for the lack of sheer mass.
At the start of the Lohengrin Prelude, the supporting high strings
don't always move precisely with the topmost line, but Ansermet's purposeful
manner subsumes such ensemble blemishes into the general flow. As the winds
enter and the textures fill out, the sound is full and glowing. The climactic
statement, beginning at 6:00, grows organically from the broad musical line.
The second cymbal crash (6:32) is noticeably early, however, and tuning discrepancies
between high strings and high reeds in the coda leave a sour effect.
Ansermet's forthright, spirited manner in the Meistersinger Prelude
is refreshing. Some performances of the piece underline its pomp, but the
conductor, without sacrificing grandeur, reminds us that the opera is, after
all, a comedy, though an unusually reflective one. The mastersingers' entry
theme strides proudly; the woodwinds are rhythmically alert in the apprentices'
music; and the recap, bringing back the three main subjects in counterpoint,
lands gracefully. Ansermet guides the first violins surely in the Prize Song
(4:02), but I'd have liked less tentative supporting parts. In the bar before
the tempo kicks up, at 1:26, co-ordination is insecure; some rushing at 5:56
produces a brief mess shortly thereafter; and the upper strings pull ahead
of the brass in the triumphant coda.
Ansermet Parsifal selections are characterful and persuasive, though
he didn't persuade me that the so-called "Good Friday music" really
works; shorn of its vocal parts, it seems to wander. In the prelude, the string
phrases at the start are searching, despite nasal tone; the brass chorale
at 4:43 blazes; and the woodwind chorales aren't the smoothest, but convey
the appropriate uplift. The woodwinds at 4:12 in the Good Friday music are
very reedy, in the French manner; and the Tristan-ish progression at
9:46 is striking.
The reliable reproduction of Decca's analogue "house sound" will
cheer veterans of vinyl days; its characteristic bass pre-emphasis obviously
doesn't hurt in this "vertically" conceived music, and there's a
nice depth and texture to the winds. I was surprised, however, to hear congestion
in some of the tuttis of the Götterdämmerung and Meistersinger
selections. The digital processing also exposes a number of false almost-entries
in the soft sustained passages that begin the Parsifal and Lohengrin
preludes; in the latter, one hears odd bits of what sounds like surreptitious
pizzicato tuning as well.
Stephen Francis Vasta
Stephen Francis Vasta is a New York-based conductor, coach, and journalist.
A French sound, bright and clear, rather than a deep, weighty Germanic one.