Asher Fisch’s recordings of the complete
Ring
earned many critical accolades on their original release, not only for
the fact that this was the first issue of the cycle in SACD sound but
also for the quality of the performances.
This reissue, handsomely packaged in a very substantial booklet with
a valuable essay by the always perceptive Mike Ashman, complete biographies
of all the singers involved, and complete texts and translations, gives
us a selection of excerpts from that cycle. Some sense of ‘bleeding
chunks’ is inevitable but the choice of the passages is wide-ranging
and extends well beyond the usual collection of expected highlights
- although it includes all of these as well with the exception perhaps
of the ‘forest murmurs’ from
Siegfried and the descent
into Nibelheim.
Fisch’s performance of the
Rheingold prelude gets things
off to an impressive start, with the orchestral playing secure and well-balanced;
we hear the opening lines of Woglinde, rapidly faded out as the action
begins. In the following excerpt from the end of the opening scene we
hear the excellent balance between stage and orchestra, with a marvellous
sense of depth and plenty of bloom of the voices of the superb trio
of
Rheintochter. This is the only section we get to hear of John
Wegner’s firmly-voiced Alberich, and I am sorry that the production
does not allow us to hear his “mocking laughter” after the
theft of the gold as requested by Wagner in the score. We are however
given a large part of the marvellous transition music which follows
the scene, faded out cruelly in mid-phrase.
We are given the whole of the final section of
Rheingold, launched
by the firm if rather uncharacterful Timothy deFore as Donner summoning
the storm-clouds and leading to a stunning thunderclap. One wonders
at the rather metallic sound of his hammer striking the rock - Solti
did the same in his renowned recording - which surely is the wrong sort
of effect. Andrew Brunsdon is a marvellously lyrical Froh as the rainbow
bridge is revealed, and John Bröcheler is a heroic-sounding Wotan,
totally devoid of any hint of woolliness, and with a ringing top F to
crown his following monologue. Elizabeth Campbell sounds rather shrewish
in her brief contribution here, but Christopher Doig is a full-voiced
Loge with plenty of character and a welcome avoidance of
Sprechstimme.
The booklet reveals that the six harp parts plus a further player offstage
that Wagner wrote here are ‘boiled down’ to a mere five
players, but then that is not altogether unusual. The
Rheintochter
are perhaps a little too distant to make the best impact in their final
lament, but better that than an unnaturally close balance. Audience
applause at the end is faded out quickly.
Fisch delivers a blistering account of the stormy prelude to
Walküre,
only marred by what sounds like an unwritten cymbal clash - or is it
a thunder sheet? - at the climax; whichever it is, Wagner’s music
needs no such extraneous additions here. We hear Siegmund’s opening
phrase, again quickly faded out, before we move to Stuart Skelton’s
heartfelt delivery of the
Spring song, taken thankfully at not
too quick a speed. The conductor Hartmut Haenchen in his notes for his
live Amsterdam recording of the
Ring contends that the music
here should be taken more rapidly than is usual nowadays, and says that
Wagner did not wish the song to be treated as an independent aria but
too speedy a traversal of the music surely renders the lyricism of the
scene meaningless. Deborah Riedel is a marvellously womanly Sieglinde;
it is hard to believe, as the booklet informs us, that at the time of
the performances she was already suffering from the cancer that would
eventually tragically kill her. The prelude to the Second Act, powerfully
delivered, is unfortunately faded out at Wotan’s first words so
we are denied the chance to hear Lisa Gasteen’s Brünnhilde
delivering her war-cry. Instead the first we hear of her is her brief
recitative following Wotan’s monologue at the end of the second
scene, a rather forlorn little section that makes little sense on its
own although it is all we are given of her performance of Brünnhilde
in this opera. We are also given the whole of the following scene between
Siegmund and Sieglinde, an odd choice for a selection of
Ring
highlights, which nevertheless gives us Riedel’s superb Sieglinde
once again.
From the Third Act we have the expected highlights: a stirringly paced
Walkürenritt and the closing scene from Wotan’s Farewell
onwards. The Valkyries are a strongly voiced bunch of ladies, and the
recording gives us the proper sense of distance for the offstage voices
- in SACD they come unexpectedly from the rear speakers. Bröcheler
moulds the lyrical music of the Farewell nicely, although again when
he strikes his spear on the rock to summon Loge the sound is much more
metallic than Wagner’s stage directions would imply. By the way,
we have in the closing section of this scene the only error I detected
in these performances, where Bröcheler omits the final syllable
on
Speeres in his phrase “Wer meines Speeres Spitze fürchtet”
- an error unfortunately emphasised when the trombones solemnly repeat
the phrase with the missing note in the correct place (track 9, 13.13).
We are given only two excerpts from
Siegfried - unfortunately
omitting the overwhelming Prelude to Act Three, one of Wagner’s
finest inspirations in the whole of the cycle. The booklet tells us
that Gary Rideout stepped into the production at the last minute; but
he is very impressive in the Forging Song although he frequently distorts
his vowel sounds, presumably in an attempt to gain the maximum audibility
- and one gets the impression at times that this is a real battle for
him. Richard Greager is an excellent Mime, much more than the usual
character tenor with a real sense of evil and menace as he plots to
poison his foster-son. As Siegfried hammers out the sword, the ringing
anvil sounds in a completely different acoustic from the voice; was
it ‘dubbed in’ by an off-stage percussionist? Later the
hammer comes into a completely different perspective, only to revert
to the original sound shortly thereafter; and in the final section it
is clearly Rideout himself who is doing the hammering, if the rhythmic
imprecision is anything to judge by.
In the closing segment of the Love Duet we have our first proper encounter
with Lisa Gasteen’s Brünnhilde. It is perhaps unfortunate
that this lyrical section finds her in less than perfect voice. It is
all too evident that she is trying to scale back her natural volume
and not always succeeding. She is a very womanly warrior maiden, but
she has the required trill and when at the end of the passage she cuts
loose in full heroic mould she suddenly comes into her own. However
Rideout at the end of a very long and strenuous evening comes across
as tired, and he evidently finds it difficult match her overwhelming
ardour. Although he manages to recover in time for the final duet section,
he is overwhelmed both by his soprano and the orchestra. These two excerpts
from
Siegfried serve to identify this part of the cycle as a
weak link in the whole, despite the excellent and exciting playing from
the orchestra under Fisch.
From
Götterdämmerung we are given the usual three excerpts,
although the substantial opening segment runs from the very beginning
of the dawn music through the whole of the succeeding duet into the
following orchestral interlude known as
Siegfried’s Rhine Journey.
Gasteen
is superbly romantic here, but the role of Siegfried has now been taken
over by Timothy Mussard, whose reedy and strained singing makes one
long to have Rideout back again. Quite apart from the unprepossessing
sound of his voice, he has a habit of landing on the flat side of the
note (as at 11.56, 12.27 and 12.53) which makes Brünnhilde’s
desire to despatch him on new adventures only too understandable although
Gasteen too fails quite to rise to her final high C. It is left to Fisch
and the orchestra to rescue matters with an impulsive and exciting reading
of the orchestral interlude. They also acquit themselves with honour
in Siegfried’s Funeral March, although for some reason the ominous
opening timpani beats are omitted; the extract begins with the rising
string theme two-and-a-half bars into the march itself. In the same
way the extract ends just before the Gutrune theme appears to lead into
the final scene. Nothing to be done about the latter in the context
of a complete performance; but the opening truncation sounds distinctly
odd.
Gasteen immediately rivets the attention as she begins her long Immolation
scene, a clarion call to arms as she bids the vassals pile high logs
for Siegfried’s funeral pyre. In the quieter central section she
manages to scale back her voice to good effect. In the final section
she conjures up a positive storm - her summons to the ravens to call
Loge to Walhall is absolutely riveting. This is some of the best singing
of a Wagnerian soprano role that we have had since the heyday of Birgit
Nilsson, with only the slightest occasional suspicion of tiredness or
strain at the end of a long evening. Fisch does nothing to rein back
the orchestral tempest that surrounds her. Unfortunately Duccio del
Monte spoils the orchestral peroration by shouting rather than singing
Zuruck vom Ring! - this is a bad habit which has become endemic
since the days of Gottlob Frick, and should be curbed. Fisch gives us
a stunning delivery of the long orchestral peroration, but he makes
a brief
Luftpause before the final seven bars which is not marked
in the score. This is another bad habit - Solti did the same thing -
and it is undesirable musically because it interrupts the downward progress
of the ominous bass line in the orchestra. Haenchen in his booklet notes,
to which I have already referred, makes the same point, but incorrectly
states that he is the first conductor in modern times not to make the
pause. Goodall performs the passage correctly, as can be heard in the
recording of his live English National Opera staging. He also correctly
observes that the descending bass line should be
louder than
the redemption theme which rides above it - it is marked
fortissimo
diminuendo, while the theme in the upper strings is already
piano
only gradually swelling out to take over the main melodic interest.
Levine in his Metropolitan DVD also performs the passage correctly.
Some photographs of the production in the booklet make one rather glad
that one did not encounter the staging in the theatre or on DVD, but
this is no matter in the context of an audio recording. The cast list
gives us the complete roster of soloists for the production, although
some are not featured on the items included here. We are given nothing
of Erda or the Norns, for example, although the singers of these roles
are listed. At the same time the names of the singers of Gunther, Gutrune
and Hunding - who are entirely eliminated from the excerpts here - are
duly omitted. In my listing I have deleted the superfluous information.
The presence of Andrew Porter’s singing translation made for the
English National Opera is a real plus, only marred by the omission of
the stage directions. I note that a similar complaint was made by critics
of the original issues. Otherwise the presentation is excellent, with
the two CDs inserted in sleeves at the back of the hardback booklet.
One is struck by the superlative quality of the orchestral playing throughout.
The Adelaide orchestra is hardly an internationally renowned body of
instrumentalists, but they are considerably more secure than the English
National Opera players were for Goodall in their 1970s cycles - the
live recording, assembled from a number of individual performances and
rehearsals, does not display the fallibility of individual instrumentalists
that was often only too evident in the theatre. In recent years, on
the contrary, there has been a tendency for orchestras to sound just
too comfortable and easy with Wagner’s scoring; the sense of sheer
danger and vitality that was clearly regarded as an essential element
of his sound by the composer can go missing, as was apparent in Barenboim’s
otherwise superbly controlled series of performances in the Proms this
year. Ironically Barenboim was Fisch’s first mentor and champion.
It needs a conductor of real energy and vigour to inject the passion
into a performance, and that is an attribute Fisch has in spades. One
is surprised to see that in the period of nearly ten years since these
recordings were made, his career has not developed exponentially.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
See also review by
Göran
Forsling
Masterwork Index:
The
ring cycle
Track-listing
CD 1
Das Rheingold (1869)
Prelude [5.27];
Wohl sicher sind wir [4.58];
Heda! Heda!
Hedo! [10.49]
John Brocheler (baritone) - Wotan; John Wegner (baritone) - Alberich;
Elizabeth Campbell (mezzo) - Fricka; Christopher Doig (tenor) - Loge;
Timothy DuFore (baritone) - Donner; Andrew Brunsdon (tenor) - Froh;
Natalie Jones (soprano) - Woglinde; Donna-Maree Dunlop (soprano) - Wellgunde;
Zan McKendree-Wright (mezzo) - Flosshilde
Die Walküre (1870)
Act One Prelude [4.23];
Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnenmond
[14.38];
Act Two Prelude [2.20];
So sah ich Siegvater nie
[13.21];
Hojotoho! [6.04];
Leb’ wohl, du kühnes,
herrliches Kind! [15.54]
John Brocheler (baritone) - Wotan; Lisa Gasteen (soprano) - Brünnhilde;
Stuart Skelton (tenor) - Siegmund; Deborah Riedel (soprano) - Sieglinde;
Kate Ladner (soprano) - Helmwige; Donna-Maree Dunlop (soprano) - Rossweise;
Zan McKendree-Wright (mezzo) - Schwertleite; Liane Keegan (contralto)
- Waltraute; Gaye McFarlane (mezzo) - Siegrune; Elizabeth Stannard (soprano)
- Gerhilde; Lisa Harper-Brown (soprano) - Ortlinde; Jennifer Barnes
(contralto) - Grimgerde
CD 2
Siegfried (1876)
Notung! Notung! [14.43];
Ewig war ich [12.35]
Gary Ridout (tenor) - Siegfried; Lisa Gasteen (soprano) - Brünnhilde;
Richard Greager (tenor) - Mime
Götterdämmerung (1876)
Dawn duet and Siegfried’s Rhine journey [21.16];
Funeral
march [7.35];
Starke Scheite [20.21]
Lisa Gasteen (soprano) - Brünnhilde; Timothy Mussard (tenor) -
Siegfried; Duccio dal Monte (bass) - Hagen
[77.55 + 76.30] 
