Comparison Recordings:
Beecham, Flagstad, Melchior, Covent
Garden (1937) (3) CD Melodram MEL 37029
Barenboim, Meier, Kollo, Bayreuth Festival
1983 Philips VHS 070 509-3
Furtwängler, Flagstad, Suthaus,
Philharmonia Orchestra RCA 5 LP LM 6700
Furtwängler, Flagstad, Suthaus,
Philh. Orch. [restored from LPs] Regis
RRC4004
This opera has been
the stuff of legend from the moment
of its conception and the notoriety
has never let up. When he wrote it Wagner
was trying to steal Wesendonck’s wife,
then Wagner gave the task of writing
out the piano reduction to Von Bülow
while Wagner was busy stealing Von Bülow’s
wife, who was the daughter of Liszt,
from whom the press claimed Wagner had
stolen all the music. Putting on the
opera caused a scandal in Munich. The
original Tristan died months after the
premiere. Gabriel Fauré wrote
a scathing musical joke on the music.
Skipping forward nearly a hundred years
this recording involved accusations,
threats of acid blinding, slanders,
feuds, stink bombs hurtled into theatre
lobbies, written apologies, the famous
secret over just who really sang the
high notes which led notable persons
to perjure themselves, etc. When the
work was all done, Furtwängler
said to producer Walter Legge, "My
name will be remembered for this [recording],
but yours should be."
Furtwängler was
Flagstad’s favourite conductor of all;
two years previously, together, they
had at Strauss’s request given the world
premiere of his Four Last Songs
in London.
One of the things I
find so amazing about Wagner’s genius
is that all his major music dramas are
just 4.25 hours long, not 3.8, mind
you, nor 5.2. His conception of the
dramatic arc was perfect at the start.
He did not struggle through many drafts,
revisions and corrections. He just wrote
out the music directly onto the orchestral
score. And one of the most amazing things
about this recording is that, now that
the truth is out that Schwartzkopf really
did sing the high notes (actually just
two high Cs in the second act that Flagstad
had stopped singing in concerts some
years before), you can’t possibly tell
by listening.
To praise this recording
would be redundant; just open your thesaurus
and read the list of superlatives. Of
course there have been and will be other
great Tristans, but this one
will always retain its place. And now
it has passed out of copyright into
the public domain and belongs to the
world. But the master tape still belongs
to EMI. And digital remastering, even
from a master tape, is an art involving
many aesthetic as well as technical
decisions and which produces a copyrightable
product. Mr. Gibson has been able to
remove virtually all the tape noise
with virtually no increase in distortion.
Bass notes are clean and deep. Background
is dead quiet, yet consonants are unclipped
and string sound is completely natural
with no audible ringing.* Unfortunately,
all of the side breaks are in the middles
of scenes; it was very inconsiderate
of Wagner to write 87 minute acts which
are beyond the capacity of a single
CD side. For the future, this can be
corrected on a DVD-Audio issue if anyone
wants to take the trouble.
To compare the EMI
edition with the Regis edition, the
latter has slight pitch unsteadiness
some of which could easily come from
the cutting lathe as well as the playback
turntable. There is also groove pre-echo,
a slight turgidity which could have
occurred in the cutter electronics or
the playback cartridge as well as in
the digitisation itself, some slight
residual vinyl roar, rolled off highs
and lows, the remains of some clicks
and pops — as I am fond of saying, the
stumps of mighty trees cut down — and
is running about 1.6% faster than the
master tape. If it were all we had,
we wouldn’t be all that badly off, especially
since some of these problems could be
mitigated with additional work. But
since we have the master tape so beautifully
restored, and for sale at a price lower
than the original LPs, we don’t have
to put up with these problems.
The Beecham disks,
cut to 210 minutes, one act per side,
compiled from two evenings with different
Kurwenals and Brangänes, preserve
a younger Flagstad with a stronger,
purer voice, and you need this one,
too, of course. She comes through very
well; others not so well, probably depending
on who was standing near the microphone.
The chorus is appropriately rowdy. The
confrontation scene with Sven Nilsson
as King Marke is deeply, quietly, heartbreaking.
Melchior at full voice has at times
a reedy, throbbing tone that must have
been galvanising live in the hall, but
on records it doesn’t compare all that
well with later Tristans. The recording
has occasional crackling and pitch waver
and some messy edits. The orchestra
sort of comes and goes and is never
in very good balance. In your mind assemble
the orchestral and ensemble sound from
the Furtwängler recording and add
the youthful robustness to Flagstad’s
voice from the Beecham recording and
you’ve got it all together.
The Melchiors were
good friends of Flagstad and her husband,
Henry Johansen. When Johansen was arrested
immediately after WWII and charged with
collaboration with the Nazis, Flagstad
was suspected of complicity. For many
months she was denied permission to
sing or leave Norway, was subjected
to interrogation, and was required to
prove she had never received any money
from her husband. She received threatening
letters, was publicly excoriated, and
was never allowed to speak to her husband
even as he lay dying in the hospital.
(She was, of course, eventually completely
exonerated of the charges). During this
period the Melchiors (and many others)
were careful never to communicate with
her. Flagstad was deeply hurt by this,
although always admiring Melchior as
an artist. Eventually after many years
they were able to exchange letters.
But Flagstad in 1952
was a more mature artist than in 1937,
so the Furtwängler is really the
better performance overall, musically
as well as sonically. Flagstad personally,
as well as her close friends and colleagues,
considered this to be her very finest
recording. Regrettably the disputes
which preceded it, surrounded it, and
continued after it, led her to stop
making recordings for EMI, despite fervent
pleading from Legge. When her contract
expired, she switched her allegiance
to Decca and began recording again in
1955. But time had been lost, and she
was never to make the dream Walküre
recording that so many had hoped for,
although she did make many fine recordings
for Decca including Walküre
excerpts.
Flagstad was not only
a great artist but a modest, honourable,
widely loved person. At her death in
1962 she was deeply mourned by many.
The Barenboim recording
features the finest recording of the
Prelude I’ve ever heard accompanied
by an effective visual of rolling surf
in the sunset. The singers are young
and the production is overall very good.
In this version Tristan dies alone,
with Isolde’s arrival and liebestod
treated as a dying man’s feverish fantasy.
Musically she’s all there, of course.
One very nice thing
about this EMI release is the relative
lack of threats and dire warnings in
the printed booklet. Instead we are
thanked for buying this disk and supporting
all of those involved in making it.
"Please don’t lend discs to others
to copy, give away illegal copies of
the discs, or use internet services
that promote illegal distribution ...
Such actions threaten the livelihood
of musicians and everyone else involved
in producing music." Is it possible
that the media corporations are actually
trying to be nice to their customers
for a change? Could this lead to the
restoration of respect and affection
between supplier and consumer? Could
the media giants actually be ready to
acknowledge that their business depends
to a greater extent than any other on
the good will of their customers? Could
they finally realise that good will
and fair play thrive better in an atmosphere
of respect and open dialogue rather
than dire threats and accusations?
*Additionally I would
have restored dynamics and subharmonics,
but many would consider this unwarranted
fiddling.
Paul Shoemaker
see also review
by Marc Bridle
Chorus of the Royal Opera House Coven Garden/Douglas
Robinson 