Somehow, I never got round
to buying a complete recording of Der Rosenkavalier,
perhaps because the competing claims of Karajan, Solti and Kleiber
seemed impossible to resolve. My heart said Karajan, whose film
version was my introduction to this wonderful opera nearly fifty
years ago; my brain said Solti, especially when a friend bought
that version and extolled its virtues as we listened to it;
Kleiber’s echt-Viennese version could claim the right
of primogeniture, but in mono only. Solti and Kleiber opened
out the small theatrical cuts which Karajan made. If Karajan,
should it be the mono or the stereo version? Both were made
at the same time, using different sets of microphones, but producer
Walter Legge doubted that stereo would ever catch on and lavished
more care on the mono. Karajan’s later DGG set was far less
well received. To complicate matters further, EMI issued a digital
version under Haitink, also dispensing with the theatrical cuts.
Unable to decide, I ended up with the excerpts from the Karajan
(currently on 5 65571 2) as a stop-gap which seemed destined
to be permanent.
Reviewing the reissued
Karajan on this site in December 2001 (5 67605 2 in the UK,
5 67609 2 in the US), Christopher Howell seems to have been
in the same quandary : “[Karajan’s] at least is one of the “Great
Recordings of the Century”. I don’t know if this in itself adds
up to a recommendation ahead of Kleiber, but it does rather
sound as if you’ll need both of them.” Karajan is now available
in this mid-price reissue or at a lower price in re-mastered
mono (3 77357 2). Solti remains at full-price (417 493-2); Kleiber
is available at mid-price from Decca (467 111-2) or more cheaply
from Naxos (8.111011-3), Documents (221927) and Regis (RRC3007).
Recently, seeing that EMI
had reissued the Haitink at a competitive price, along with a
number of other opera sets, I bought it on impulse. (NB: Beware
– some retailers are still offering this set for sale as an expensive
import.) The reissue comes in a laminated cardboard box, with
the individual discs in stiff cardboard sleeves. The cover is
in garish pink, as is the label side of each CD, becoming progressively
darker from CD1 to CD3. There is a booklet with multi-lingual
notes and a detailed synopsis keyed to the track numbers; with
around 20 tracks on each CD, the synopsis is easy to follow. The
booklet is fairly lavishly illustrated, including a colour reproduction
of Roller’s design for Octavian bearing the rose, but there is
no libretto. The back cover of the box states that full libretto
and translations are available at emiclassics.com but I was unable
to locate them at this address. Instead I used the libretto from
the Opera
Guide site which, unfortunately, does not include a translation.
Hoffmannstal’s text is deliberately couched in archaic diction,
which even fluent speakers of modern German may find troublesome,
but the detailed synopsis in the booklet should help.
The clarity, warmth and
range of the orchestral sound are evident from the start; individual
instruments and the voices are clearly located within this overall
picture. From Octavian’s opening words, “Wie du warst! wie du
bist!” the diction is clear, even where Strauss occasionally
sets the musical rhythm at odds with natural speech-rhythm.
Kiri te Kanawa and Anne Sofie von Otter make very good immediate
impressions from the start; if anything, von Otter makes the
stronger impression, but that is as it should be. Octavian’s
familiar “du” as against the Marschallin’s formal “Er” right
from the start differentiates their attitudes to their relationship.
This differentiation is
most clearly seen at the conclusion of Act 1 (CD1, tracks 17
– end). The whole of this section is included on the Karajan
highlights disc, providing an opportunity for comparison. My
impression that the conductors adopt similar tempi is borne
out by comparing the timings. Haitink employs less legato
than Karajan but is prepared to take his time where appropriate;
though his tempi are usually slightly brisker than Karajan’s,
his overall time for the opera is about the same, allowing for
the fact that he includes slightly more music.
Both Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
(for Karajan) and Kiri te Kanawa cope very well in conveying
the Marschallin’s range of moods, from the reflective tone of
“Da geht er hin” to the panic of having failed to kiss Octavian
goodbye and the wistful decision at the end to send the silver
rose to Octavian. Te Kanawa’s German sounds almost as idiomatic
as Schwarzkopf’s, though she does not quite hit the Viennese
a in Schwarzkopf’s pronunciation of “Prater” and I thought
I once detected a marginally soft ch at the end of “doch”,
hardly a major crime.
In this section both Octavians,
Christa Ludwig (Karajan) and Anne Sofie von Otter (Haitink),
seemed to me slightly to out-sing their respective Marschallins;
as at the beginning, this is not inappropriate with Octavian
once again more often addressing her familiarly as ‘du’ than
she him. Finally he yields to her mood and addresses her as
‘Sie’; both Octavians mark this transition well. I have already
mentioned the way in which the voices are clearly located within
the orchestral sound in the Haitink set, only very occasionally
lost in it. On the Karajan they tend more often to disappear
within the overall texture, especially in the Marschallin’s
quieter moments. Paradoxically, it appears that the voices are
more clearly located on the mono version of the Karajan. Even
the voices of the agitated servants at the end of the act are
more clearly differentiated from each other on the newer recording.
Barbara Hendricks sings
excellently as Sophie; her voice is marginally less girlish
than Teresa Stich-Randall’s for Karajan and she occasionally
sacrifices the correct vowel sound for the sake of hitting the
right, beautiful note; she even seems to substitute a u
for a ü in Zunkünftiger where this is not a consideration
– Grundheber’s correct pronunciation of the word immediately
afterwards makes this more prominent than it would otherwise
be – but overall her pronunciation is perfectly acceptable.
The intertwining of Hendricks’ and von Otter’s voices as their
words and thoughts come closer together after the presentation
of the rose in Act 2 (CD2, track 4: “Dahin muss ich zurück …
/ Ich war ein Bub …”) is marginally less magical than on the
Karajan recording, perhaps because in this duet the slightly
more forward placement of the voices in the digital recording
is less of a virtue.
Kurt Rydl’s Baron Ochs
is suitably bovine; he strikes just the right balance of lyricism
and clumsiness in his rendition of Mit mir …, though
in general he is not quite a match for Karajan’s Otto Edelmann,
whose clearer enunciation reminds us that this ox’s unlikely
patronymic is von Lerchenau (lark-meadow). Both adopt
ripe Austrian vowels, especially in Act 2, though both are inconsistent
in their pronunciation of the -ei- diphthong; von Otter’s
servant-girl accent when pretending to be ‘Mariandl’ is also
pretty convincing.
In the closing scene of
Act 3 (CD3, tracks 18-20) Haitink and his cast achieve an effect
every bit as magical as Karajan, though at a marginally faster
tempo; neither sounds too fast or too slow within its own terms
and the singing is magical on both recordings. We have long
known that matters would end thus and the Marschallin’s “Ja,
ja”, in reply to Faninal’s observation that that’s how young
people are, brings us back to her “Sei Er nur nicht wie alle
Männer sind!” at the end of Act 1 – she hopes that Octavian
won’t be like all the others, but she knows he will and that
she will be generous enough to approve. Strauss manages to put
all this into those two syllables and both te Kanawa and Schwarzkopf
get it just right.
With honours more or less
even between these two EMI versions, I am still left with my
original quandary: do I now stay with Haitink and dispose of
Karajan, or do I trade in both for the complete Karajan version,
when I would not want to be without both in whole or in part?
In the end my solution was simple: there is enough space in
the Haitink box for me to replace the jewel case of the Karajan
with a plastic envelope and insert it as an appendix. The jewel
case will then serve to replace a broken one and I get to keep
one-and-a-third wonderful recordings If you have the space for
two complete sets, perhaps the Haitink and the mono Karajan
would be your best compromise. If you have room for three, better
throw in Kleiber, too.
Brian
Wilson
