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Reviews for
GHCD 2293-95 Richard Strauss D3er
Rosenkavalier
International Record Review – December 2004
R.
Strauss - Der Rosenkavaliera
Maria
Reining (soprano) Die Feldmarschallin; Lisa della Casa (soprano) Octavian; Kurt
Böhme (bass) Baron Ochs; Hilde Gueden (soprano) Sophie; Alfred Poell (baritone)
Faninal; Karl Terkal (tenor) Italian Tenor; Sieglinde Wagner (mezzo) Annina;
Laszlo Szemere (tenor) Valzacchi; Judith Hellwig (soprano) Leitmetzerin; Emmy
Dax (soprano) Mi1liner; Oscar Czerwenka (bass) Notary; Franz Bierbach (bass)
Police Commissioner; Georg Müller (bass) Marscttallin’s Major-Domo; August
Jaresch (tenor) Faninal’s Major-Domo, Landlord; Vienna State Opera Chorus;
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/CIemens Krauss.
Der
Rosenkavalier -Act 3, final sceneb.
Viorica
Ursuleac. Tiana Lemnitz.
Erna
Berger (sopranos); Georg Hann (bass-baritone); Berlin State Opera Orchestra/CIemens
Krauss.
Guild
mono GHCD2293/5 (budget price, three discs, 3 hours 19 minutes, AAD). From
bDecca-Polydor CA8238, with connecting passages inserted from a 1944
Munich broadcast. Website www.guildmusic.com. Remastering Engineer
Richard Caniell. Dates b1936, alive performance at
the Salzburg Festival in 1953.
R. Strauss – Der Rosenkavalier (Andante mono AND3985)
R. Strauss – Der Rosenkavalier (Naxos Historical mono 8.110277-79
Comparisons:
Reining, Jurinac, Weber, Gueden et al, Vienna State Op Chor, VPO/E
Kleiber (Decca) 467 111-L(19S4)
Ursuleac, von Milinkovic, Weber, Kem et al, Bavarian State Op Chor,
Bavarian State Orch/Krauss (Preiser) 9021B (1942)
Three
recent historic recordings of Richard Strauss’s and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s
‘comedy for music’ arrived almost together, led by three of the greatest Strauss
conductors of the twentieth century whose work in the opera house (major to each
of their careers) is otherwise seriously under-represented on disc.
As
one might predict, George’s Szell performance - the oldest but the best sounding
of these transfers - is supremely well disciplined and organized, every tricky
rhythm and time signature beautifully rehearsed and in place, ensemble
needle-point precise. It excels in the score’s many loud and busy moments - the
panic when the Marschallin thinks her husband has returned, the various
Elektra-like outbursts of the Lerchenau servants, or the prelude to
Act 3 (frequently, but not at all here, reduced to a kind of noisy
Gebrauchsmusik accompanying Octavian’s and Valzacchi’s preparation of booby
traps for Ochs). Like Reiner - but absolutely unlike Krauss - Szell relishes any
modernity in the scoring, the discords, the ‘wrong’ harmonies, occasionally and
most excitingly making the piece sound like Wozzeck a decade or so early.
It is also true (and predictable) that Szell can be a little strait-laced,
especially in Act 1 where his precision about bar lines sometimes inhibits the
(still) girlishly sensual side of Maria Reining’s Marschallin. In the great Act
3 Trio too, she can be sensed resisting Szell’s pacing a little. But in Act 2
the maestro seems to take fire from the Octavian/Sophie romance: the silver rose
arrives to a passionately built climax and the conducting throughout is on the
visceral level of Szell’s hair-raising Cleveland Don Juan or his song
accompaniments to Schwarzkopf. In Jarmila Novotna Szell has one of the great
Octavians on record, a soprano with a good lower voice (for Act 2) able to point
every dramatic detail.
This
Salzburg performance was occasionally pirated before (this Andante set leaving
those issues dead in the water for sound and excellent annotation), but Reiner’s
Met performance, tellingly transferred by Ward Marston from a rather
intractable-sounding TV soundtrack, is new on disc. If you know his fabled
Salome collaboration with Ljuba Welitsch, you will immediately recognize
Reiner’s genius with Strauss’s textures: swift, light (but not in the
‘classical’ manner of Krauss or Böhm), unfailingly teasing out the motor of each
moment in the score and letting his instruments’ colour speak in a manner that
was surely inherited from his years close to the composer himself in Dresden.
Reiner is a great accompanist and his work with Eleanor Steber’s aristocratic
yet vulnerable Marschallin is a treat in itself, as is his close control over
Emanuel List, his witty but rhythmically and verbally vulnerable Ochs. As we
expect from the Met in those days there are cuts aplenty (nine in Act 3 alone,
although all from Ochs’s tavern embarrassments), but Reiner’s line through the
drama is at least as fine as any other conductor’s on disc.
As a
footnote to its release Guild appends Clemens Krauss’s 1936 Berlin recording of
the big soprano music in Act 3, dubbing in the gaps from a 1944 Krauss-Ied
Bavarian broadcast. With his wife Viorica Ursuleac on her best recorded form,
and no less than Tiana Lernnitz and a (younger) Erna Berger as the young lovers,
this is an unmissable 12 minutes of Strauss history on disc. The main event, new
to disc, features supreme performances from Reining (in better voice than on the
famous 1954 Erich Kleiber studio set) and della Casa, a young soprano Octavian
alarmingly apt in both boudoir romance and low ‘Mariandel’ comedy. The German
Ochs himself (Böhme) is inclined to overplay his crude side, and is more brutal
(and far less entertaining) than the Viennese-born veterans on the other sets -
but he is certainly accurate and recovers dignity well when the game is up at
the inn. Krauss himself - and here is the rub - sounds only intermittently on
fire - he was coming to the end of a summer’s work which had included his
Bayreuth début in both the Ring and Parsifal. The beginning and
end of Act 1 are terrific (gorgeous string-playing) and the Trio might just be
the most thrillingly paced on record (and it is fast!), but much of Ac t 2 (not
helped by the recorded sound, admittedly) sounds routine and loud. The wartime
set is a better way to hear this maestro’s work on this score, although its cast
is not the equal of this one. Also, the sound on Guild’s issue (from a private
recording of the Austrian Radio broadcast) cannot always cope with loud,
especially soprano-dominated climaxes, although some good work has evidently
been done on the Ochs sections. But, at Guild’s price, few should resist these
singers and that Berlin bonus.
Andante’s
bonus (on a fourth disc) renews acquaintance with the abridged Heger set,
another collector’s essential that might have been even more magnetic had it
been led (as was planned) by Bruno Walter. As for the singers, these are not
literally creators’ performances but they feel like them. The Andante set is not
cheap but the combination of its main performance, a good transfer by Gottfried
Krauss and the luxury presentation, full libretto and notes make it pretty
essential. (There are some interesting disagreements in Guild’s and Andante’s
notes as to where certain cast members died.) And the Reiner set has his
conducting, another heavenly women’s trio (Steber is exceptional) and evidently
well-rehearsed and committed work from the New York house ensemble, not least
Hugh Thomposn’s accurate and unguyed Faninal. Mike V.
Ashman
You
will need a studio recording or two but for sheer theatrical frisson this
Salzburg performance should not be overlooked ... Jonathan Woolf - MusicWeb
International
Richard
STRAUSS
(1864-1949)
Der Rosenkavalier - opera in three acts
The Feldmarschallin, Princess Werdenberg - Maria Reining (soprano)
Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau - Kurt Boehme (baritone)
Octavian - Lisa della Casa (soprano)
Herr von Faninal – Alfred Poell (baritone)
Sophie, his daughter - Hilde Gueden (soprano)
Marianne, Sophie’s duenna – Judith Hellwig (soprano)
Valzacchi, an intriguer – Laszlo Szemere (tenor)
Annina, his partner – Sieglinde Wagner (contralto)
The Major-Domo to the Feldmarschallin –Georg Müller (tenor)
An Attorney – Oscar Czerwenka (bass)
An Italian Singer – Karl Terkal (tenor)
Police Inspector – Franz Bierbach (bass)
Innkeeper and Faninal’s Major-Domo – August Jaresch (tenor)
 Chorus
of the Vienna State Opera
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Clemens Krauss
Recorded live at the Salzburg Festival, 1953
Trio to the end of Act III - with
Viorica Ursuleac
Tiana Lemnitz
Erna Berger
Georg Hann
Berlin State Opera Orchestra/Clemens Krauss
Recorded 1936 on 78s
GUILD
HISTORICAL GHCD 2293/95
[3 CDs: 68.07 + 57.01 + 74.18]
Here’s
something special for admirers of Clemens Krauss – the first ever release of
this 1953 Salzburg Rosenkavalier. Preiser has released a Krauss 1942
Bavarian broadcast with his wife, Viorica Ursuleac (who appears in Guild’s 1936
78 excerpts which are splendid, though there are splices from other performances
to ensure continuity) and Georgine von Milinkovic et al. There are also some
Vienna State Opera live extracts dating from the same period.
Firstly a
word about recording sonics and quality. The copy was made by a private
collector and Guild notes that there was shifting equalization, some breaks and
that it enshrined a metallic quality with the voice of the Ochs, Kurt Boehme. It
also notes, correctly, that the broadcast has an airless quality. I would add
this; the microphones seem to have been placed more over the pit than the stage
so that the flaring horns, for example, in the orchestral introduction to Act I
leap out dramatically. The sound is certainly recessive and cramped; percussion
is muffled, internal sectional balance is occasionally problematic. There are
some blips as well – they sound like fractionally missing moments where sides
were changed. I should also add – this sounds like a litany of problems, which
isn’t really the case but they should be noted – that the sound splinters and
fractures somewhat in the Second Act (especially Mord! Mord! – which is
uncomfortable). One can also hear some radio interference in this section of the
Act, which is temporarily off-putting. At 1.17 into Er muss mich
pardioneren (Act II, track 12) there is the kind of "edit" I referred to
earlier and this happens a few times.
All right,
this doesn’t sound good. But there is good news; apart from the
constriction of sound the problems are essentially survivable. Those with a
serious interest in historic performance and in the musicianship of Strauss’s
favourite Rosenkavalier conductor will want to hear it and this notwithstanding
the fact that a number of the principals have also left behind recordings of
their roles in other sets. Reining famously recorded it for Kleiber in 1955
(Decca) but also for Szell, live in 1949 – now on Andante. Gueden, for instance,
was also in that Kleiber cast.
The
greatest and most animating feature of this remains Clemens Krauss. He
encourages a sense of seamless animation, with scenes developing a momentum that
glides naturally into subsequent ones. There’s no sense of the static or tableau
about his leadership. Rhythms are sharply etched and wittily pointed. Wind
principals are given their head and plaudits in particular go to the bassoonist
and clarinettist. In the Act II introduction we hear some succulent echt-Viennese
string portamenti and a veritable surge of adrenalin. I’ve seldom heard bettered
the masterly way he handles the end of In dieser feierlichen Stunde –
where he judges the theatrical temperature with the most acute perception.
Listen as well to the sheer naturalness of his sprung rhythm in the
Octavian-Sophie exchange Mit ihren Augen voller Tränen. Even here though,
things aren’t perfect, nor would one expect them to be. The Act III trio is a
mite untidy, though it is fleetly taken and beautifully articulate, and there is
throughout, though more so in the last two Acts, a slight drop in adrenalin.
This is relative though; Krauss is still a formidable guide, not as rhythmically
incisive as Szell but with a greater sense of rubato and stage design – and I
think, in the end, definably more of a sense of the humanity of the score.
I agree
with annotator London Green that Reining is heard at something like her
Straussian best in the 1949 Szell broadcast but that Krauss’s conducting has a
flexibility that elevates her assumption still further. Hers is a less weighty
voice than usual and hers remains throughout a Marschallin who seeks the light,
not the depths, of the role. Her voice and impersonation are entirely consonant
in this. Lisa della Casa is likewise a soprano and this lightening of the voices
in their scenes together gives them a sense of vocal equality. She is
technically eloquent and tonally fresh and conveys in large measure the verve
and increasing maturity of Octavian. Sophie is Hilde Gueden, flighty, quick, and
Ochs is Boehme at his buffo best but with a slight taste of vinegar in the
voice. He does overdo the ruffian elements rather too much but it’s a credible
portrait.
In
conclusion this is a powerful souvenir of Krauss’s credentials as a Straussian.
Compromised though it is by sonic limitations it will stand as an ancillary
purchase. You will need a studio recording or two but for sheer theatrical
frisson this Salzburg performance should not be overlooked, even though the
wartime broadcast has distinctive merits of its own.
Jonathan
Woolf
Page revised 09.02.05
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