This is the fourth and final instalment in the Bayreuth Ring of August 1956 – and my goodness, you have to admire the stamina and expertise of the artists involved; Astrid Varnay even steps up as Third Norn, having sung Brünnhilde on the two previous nights.

Sonically, the series has been a triumph as a result of Pristine’s remastering. Artistically, the standard is very high; the addition of the great Hermann Uhde as Gunther to an already stellar cast only enhances its appeal. The main drawback to the cycle so far has been the incessant hacking of the audience, only amplified by the sonic refurbishment, but they mostly spare us in the opening scene as the Norns uselessly but dramatically narrate past events. Once again, Jean Madeira is stunningly strong-voiced, and if it is slightly disconcerting to hear Fricka and Brünnhilde as the other two Sisters of Fate, the sheer quality of the voices of Ilosvay and Varnay is ample compensation; this is simply great singing from all three. The climax of the scene when the Rope of Destiny snaps – “Es riß!” – and the sisters descend back to Mother Erda, is riveting.

Then the unbridled coughing starts again, all through the lovely Prelude to “Zu neuen Taten” before the amplitude of the orchestral playing masks it and Astrid has had time for a quick change costume change. She is in great voice, without too much “heaving” or “swooping and concludes the duet with a ringing top C. Windgassen was never anyone’s ideal of a Wagnerian Heldentenor but he, too, is good form and I like the spaciousness of Knappertsbusch’s direction; he lets the love music breathe without dragging. Siegfried’s Rhine Journey is take at more of a sedate canter than a gallop but is beautifully played and controlled with plenty of internal swing and momentum. Uhde and Greindl make a well-contrasted pair of half-brothers, the one lighter and leaner of tone and suitably craven, the other dark, lowering and “ugly” in the right way – although his calls of “Hoi-ho!” to Siegfried are clearly a stretch and he can sound clumsy. Just as she was a scintillating Freia and Sieglinde, Gré Brouwenstijn is ideal as a vulnerable, shimmering Gutrune.

The scene where Siegfried disguised by the Tarnhelm as Gunther breaks through the Magic Fire to win Brünnhilde is especially vivid; Varnay terror is conveyed through some laser-like top notes and great intensity of expression. We then move on to Neidlinger’s cameo as a matchless Alberich, cajoling of his son; listening to this carefully wrought performance reminds me how well Wagner maintains both dramatic tension and musical interest through the whole storyline of this very long work. Once again, the coughing through the orchestral prelude to the “Hagens Ruf” scene is fearsome, however. The chorus of vassals is splendidly animated and their rambunctiousness in combination with Greindl’s crude but effective bellowing drives the action along rousingly. Much is made of Kna’s supposedly leisurely speeds but in fact he takes a mere thirteen minutes longer overall than Krauss in 1953, which is hardly a lot in the context of so long a work – and some consider Krauss too rushed.

A touchstone passage for me in any performance of Götterdämmerung is the oath-swearing trio which concludes the second act – and here it really delivers; scintillating singing and playing from all concerned earning rapturous applause.

The Rhinemaidens’ trio opening the third act is captivating – sometimes even the coughers take a break to listen. Windgassen is understandably occasionally a little dry and strained but by and large copes admirably and is now much more accurate in his beast of a role and makes a fine job of recollection narrative and death. Kna conducts the funeral march slowly and nobly, rising to a great climax; the trumpet and bank of brass in general are wonderful and again, some of the coughers hold off for a bit. Brouwenstijn, sounding very like Gundula Janowitz, delivers a chilling theatrical scream at the sight of Siegfried’s corpse and Varnay seizes the last of her big moments to sing a searing “Starke Scheite”. She doesn’t have quite the ease and gleam of Kirsten Flagstad, Birgit Nilsson or Rita Hunter – there is a little hooty sliding – but she has enormous heft, warmth and sincerity, and caps a truly commanding performance with her lament. The holocaust of the finale is gripping – breathtakingly grand – and the applause is thunderous.

If you can tolerate the coughing, this Götterdämmerung – indeed the whole cycle – is a magnificent testimony to the marvel that was Knappertsbusch and his team of singers and instrumentalists in Bayreuth in the 1950s, and to the imperishable glory of Wagner’s music.

Ralph Moore | MAY 8, 2024

The final instalment of Knapperstbusch’s 1956 Bayreuth Ring comes over strongly. One feature of this production is the willingness of singers to take multiple roles. So with the trio of Norns, Jean Madeira, who sings first Norn, has previously sung Erda and Rossweiẞe, Maria von Ilosvay has previously sung Floẞhilde and Schwertleite. The third Norn is no less than Astrid Varnay herself, as if she didn’t have enough to do as Brünnhilde. They make a powerful trio, though they are balanced rather too closely compared to the orchestra, so the first appearance of the crucial immolation motif is rather obscured.

In the following scene with Siegfried and Brünnhilde, Windgassen and Varnay are now known quantities, though I had the feeling they were conserving their resources for the demanding scenes yet to come. Siegfried’s journey to the Rhine is nicely done, though the glockenspiel at the climax was inaudible. That, however, is a decorative touch; more serious is that the bass clarinet, which has several important solos in this work, is barely audible and sometimes inaudible. I suppose this is the result of the layout of the orchestra pit, under the stage, with the wind and brass fairly far back and a long way from the microphones, which have been placed primarily to catch the voices well, which indeed they do.

With the first Gibichung scene we meet Hermann Uhde as Gunther. He has not previously appeared in this Ring and he gives us an apparently assured Gunther, all the more impressive because of the way he conveys his moral collapse in the second act. Josef Greindl, who was Hunding in Die Walküre, is here the far more formidable Hagen, and he clearly relishes the role, being even more sinister when being darkly comic. I was particularly impressed with Gré Brouwenstijn’s Gutrune. She had been Freia in Das Rheingold and Sieglinde in Die Walküre and made a success of both those roles. She does so also with Gutrune, making her not just an unwilling tool of the men, but an active participant in the plot to drug Siegfried and so win him for himself, and herself giving him the poisoned drink. Windgassen conveys his artless cameraderie with the Gibichungs particularly well and the swearing of blood-brotherhood, with Hagen abstaining, is powerful. Hagen’s watch then brings us some of the darkest music in the work.

The scene then moves back to Brünnhilde’s rock and her scene with Waltraute, who is Jean Madeira again, who did not sing the role in Die Walküre. Her urgent pleas to Brünnhilde to return the ring to the Rhinemaidens are met with indifference by Brünnhilde, who can hardly be expected to care about the fate of the gods given how she has been treated. Waltraute goes away uncomforted and is replaced by the disguised Siegfried. In the Solti recording, the engineers famously disguised Windgassen’s voice, to give it a baritonal timbre to represent his disguise as Gunther using the Tarnhelm. There is nothing like that here, but Windgassen is suitably gruff and curt, while Varnay well conveys Brünnhilde’s distress and fear.

The second act begins with Alberich’s final appearance, sung again by the inimitable Gustav Neidlinger, his dialogue with Hagen taking up where Hagen’s watch left off. We then have the rather low-key scene in which Siegfried returns, as himself, to report on his success in extracting Brünnhilde. The atmosphere then darkens considerably as Hagen summons the vassals to come armed to what turns out to be the double wedding of Gunther to Brünnhilde and Siegfried to Gutrune. Apart from the fact that the steer horn parts are taken just by trombones, as they usually are, this goes really well. The tension is kept up to the end of the act, with the oath-swearing scene, where Windgassen really shows what he is capable of and where Varnay is also triumphant. I am not going to quibble about Windgassen’s slight rhythmic inaccuracies. In the vengeance trio which follows, Uhde reveals the true shabbiness of Gunther’s nature when Hagen’s dangling the prospect of acquiring the ring in front of him is enough to make him support the plan to murder Siegfried. As if Hagen had any intention of letting the ring out of his hand, if he ever got hold of it.

The third act begins with the utterly delightful and relaxed scene with the Rhinemaidens, lamenting their lost ring with the most seductive new themes and then flirting with Siegfried in their attempt to regain the ring. The trio of Rhinemaidens is the same as in Rheingold, but meanwhile Paula Lenchner as Wellgunde has been moonlighting as Gerhilde and Maria von Ilosvay as Floẞhilde as both Schwertleite and Second Norn. I think of these roles as requiring rather heaver voices than the Rhinemaidens, but they manage the transition well, and Lore Wissmann as Woglinde does not take another role. The Rhinemaidens almost succeed in persuading Siegfried, but their linking this to his own safety is enough to make him abandon the idea. Siegfried then joins up with the hunting party, Windgassen giving us a ringing top C, as indeed written in the score, as part of his greeting. Siegfried’s account of his earlier life and his drinking of the antidote to the amnesiac drug lead him finally to recall Brünnhilde and so to his murder for perjury. His final farewell to Brünnhilde after being stabbed – a very operatic touch this – is movingly done by Windgassen. The funeral march is grand and impressive.

Back with the Gibichungs, Brouwenstijn again well characterizes Gutrune’s hope, fear and distress, though I find Varnay rather out of sorts in this scene. Perhaps she was saving herself for the immolation aria, where indeed she is powerful. Maybe I am biased, having been brought up on Nilsson on the Solti recording, but I don’t find Varnay quite as commanding, with a slight tendency to scoop and not always to hit her notes in the dead centre. This is being hypercritical; by any normal standards, this is a strong performance. The final orchestral peroration is well paced, with the Rhinemaidens’ music in the background and the redemption by love theme soaring above. But the Valhalla theme on the brass, progressing through some of the grandest and most powerful harmonies that even Wagner ever wrote, does not quite cut through as it should.

Still, no performance of so big and demanding a work can be wholly satisfactory in every respect, and this has a good deal going for it. The cast is an extremely strong one, arguably stronger than anything that can be assembled today. The orchestral playing is superb; Knappertsbusch really commands this score, and I never felt his pacing was wrong. The recording favours the voices, and the orchestral balance is not always what it should be, but the Solti recording was a studio one, with endless pains taken to get the balance right, whereas this is live from the theatre. Pristine Audio’s Ambient Stereo XR remastering has been very successful; one is hardly aware that this is a mono recording and there seems to be no shortage of the higher frequencies. My reservations are really quite minor compared to the achievement here and in the whole cycle. Even Wagnerians who prefer Solti or more recent recordings should consider this.

Stephen Barber | November 3, 2024