Bayreuth Festival 1929

 

I have mixed feelings about creating this post. Richard Wagner was a groundbreaking composer; his operas are monumentally impressive creations. He was also anti-semitic, and something of an Aryan nationalist. The composer's name has become inexorably linked to Hitler and the Nazis, to whom Wagner's music was the highest expression of German art and ideals. In one sense, he can't be blamed for that, since he died some 50 years before Hitler came to power. But one has the uncomfortable sense that Wagner would have embraced the Nazi movement had he been around at the time, given some of his writings.

In a sense, Wagner embodies the age-old debate: to what extent can you separate the art from the artist? To the record industry in the early days of electrical recording, there seemed to be no question - Wagner's music represented the epitome of musical art, the most elevated music around. The problem was that the sheer dimensions of the music meant that it really couldn't be adequately captured by the technology of the time. A short Wagner opera runs around two and a half hours, and the longer ones are around four or five hours. Five minutes was the maximum playing time of 12" 78 RPM record side.

So when Columbia issued a mammoth eleven-disc album of Wagner recordings from the 1929 Bayreuth Festival, it was an event. This was the largest album set that Columbia had issued up to that point. The 1929 Columbia catalog included a page of quotes from musicians and critics, praising the recordings. And it is indeed an impressive achievement for its time. One could buy an hour and 15 minutes of well-recorded music by the composer who was considered to be the top of the heap in the classical music world - and for a mere $16.50! Of course, adjusting for inflation, that works out to be about $287 at the time I'm writing this.

Surprisingly, I can't find that these historic recordings have ever been reissued. I may be missing something, but I can't find them anywhere online or on any reissue CDs. So qualms and all, here is Columbia Masterworks Set Number 79, issued in 1929. I have joined all multi-side selections into single tracks. (See the photograph from the catalog for the original pairings and side breaks.) Again, recording quality is generally good, although there are a few moments when the engineers miscalculated, resulting in some distortion. I have used minimal noise reduction, so you will hear some surface noise. All selections are performed by the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra; conductors and additional artists are noted under each title.

Parsifal: Transformation Scene

     Conducted by Karl Muck

Parsifal: Grail Scene

     Conducted by Karl Muck; with chorus

Parsifal: Flower Maidens Scene

    Conducted by Karl Muck; with Flower Maidens and chorus

Parsifal: Prelude, Act 3

    Conducted by Siegfried Wagner

Parsifal: Good Friday Music

    Conducted by Siegfried Wagner; with Alexander Kipnis, bass, and Fritz Wolff, tenor

Siegfried: Forest Murmurs

    Conducted by Franz von Hoesslin

Siegfried: Prelude, Act 3

    Conducted by Franz von Hoesslin

Siegfried: Fire Music

    Conducted by Franz von Hoesslin

Das Rheingold: Entry of the Gods Into Valhalla

    Conducted by Franz von Hoesslin; with Rhinedaughters

Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries

    Conducted by Franz von Hoesslin; with Valkyries

Stokowsky's 1921 Tannhäuser Overture

Lengthy, complex classical compositions posed difficulties for record companies in the pre-1925 acoustic era. A 12-inch record side could only contain four-and-a-half or (at the most) five minutes of music, so longer compositions had to be split over multiple record sides. And the acoustic recording process was fairly kind to strong vocalists, but was woefully inadequate in terms of capturing the timbre of instrumental ensembles. Orchestral music fared particularly poorly in the acoustic era, with record companies generally limiting orchestras to short, familiar warhorses, often edited to fit on one record side.

But as I've mentioned before, Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, understood the recording process better than most musicians. His are some of the best-sounding orchestral recordings of the acoustic era. And while he mostly offered shorter works and single movements (designed to fit on one record side) for his acoustic records, he was bold enough to record some longer pieces with the Philadelphia Symphony before it was common to do so.

Stokowski had been making records for four years when he recorded Wagner's 13-minute "Tannhäuser Overture" in late 1921. It's spread over three single-sided Victor Red Seal discs - sold separately, since the concept of the record "album" only became common with the advent of electrical recording. Stokowski leads the Philadelphians in a magnificent reading of Wagner's piece; its impact overcomes the limitations of the archaic recording process.

I have combined the three sides into one file below. The original issues are:

Part One - Victor 74758: matrix C-22808, take 10; recorded November 7, 1921
Part Two - Victor 74759: matrix C-22814, take 7; recorded December 5, 1921
Part Three - Victor 74768: matrix C-24999, take 2; recorded November 7, 1921.

All parts were recorded in Victor's Camden, New Jersey studios.

Philadelphia SO/Stokowski: Tannhäuser Overture