Release Date: 01 January 1999
Label: Naxos - Historical / Naxos Historical
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 2
Barcode: 636943104927
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: WAGNER, R.
Release Date: 12 January 2002
Label: Naxos - Historical / Naxos Historical
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 4
Barcode: 636943122129
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: WAGNER, R.
Description
Alfred Hertz's 1913 recording of 37 minutes' worth of excerpts from Parsifal was one of the more ambitious orchestral recording projects of the acoustic era. In those days before microphones were developed for electrical recording, musicians gathered in small studios, crowded around a gigantic horn into which they would play. Balances were determined by seating proximity to the horn. Even then, some types of instruments (e.g. the brass) registered more clearly than others (the strings). In the present recording, there appears to be little of the re-orchestration which was commonly undertaken during this period in an attempt to bolster the less-phonogenic sections of the orchestra, (by, for example, reinforcing the bass line with tubas). As a result, we are able to hear the Berlin Philharmonic in much the way it would have sounded in concert, albeit through a sonic glass darkly. The 1927 Bayreuth Festival recordings were made two years after the adoption of electrical recording as the industry standard enabled itinerant engineers to set up microphones in any concert hall in the world - even the fabled Festspielhaus itself. The original recordings were far from flawless, even by the standards of the time; yet Karl Muck's high fees precluded the Columbia engineers from remaking several sides which were excessively overcut. Artist fees were also cited as the reason for recording the \Grail Scene without a Titurel or an Amfortas, and the "Flower Maidens Scene" without Parsifal. However, what we miss there is more than made up for by the presence of the original Bayreuth bells in the Act I Transformation Scene. Cast for the first production of the opera in 1882, they were melted down for the German war effort in the early 1940s. Their imposing sound (notably tuned to a lower pitch than the orchestra was using by the late 1920s) would have vanished forever from the earth, had it not been preserved for posterity in shellac grooves. The finest vintages of source material were used for these transfers. The Hertz discs came from Hanover "Gramophone Concert Record" pressings, the Muck First Act Prelude and all of Act III were transferred from Victor "Z" pressings; and the 1927 Bayreuth Festival recordings came from a combination of U.S. Columbia "Viva-Tonal" and laminated, pre-EMI English Columbia copies, with the best sides from each being used. Although Ceder-2 declicking was employed, some low-frequency thumps caused by pressing bubbles remain in portions of the rare Hertz recording. ""
Description
Richard Wagner (1813-1883): ParsifalThe stirring Celtic myths of King Arthur and his knights and the quest for the Grail have fascinated European writers from the Middle Ages onward. The publication of Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote in the early seventeenth century served to keep the idea of an age of chivalry alive, even though he poked gentle fun at it. In the nineteenth century two great artists were obsessed with these myths: the poet Alfred Tennyson naturally concentrated on them from an English angle, while the composer Richard Wagner came to them from the Teutonic viewpoint. Wagner’s primary source was the thirteenth-century poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, whose writings he encountered in 1845. Having toyed with the idea of creating an opera round the ‘holy fool’ Parsifal (also known as Parzival or Perceval), he ended up writing one about Parsifal’s son Lohengrin; and it was not until 1857 that he again started thinking seriously about the project, although he did consider introducing the character of Parsifal briefly into Tristan und Isolde. He wrote out a sketch (which is lost) for a three-act drama, and in 1865 he was able to give his patron King Ludwig II of Bavaria a fairly good impression of what the opera would be about. All this time, as he occupied himself with The Ring and Die Meistersinger, his concept of Parsifal was evolving, acquiring more and more layers of symbolism. For instance, Wolfram and other early writers were not too sure what the Grail actually was; but Wagner’s further reading drew him to the conviction held by later authors that it was the chalice used at the Last Supper and then employed by Joseph of Arimathea to catch the blood that flowed from the spear wound in the side of Christ on the Cross. The concept that the spear which plays a large part in the drama would be the very weapon with which the centurion Longinus inflicted that wound, was an even later discovery for him. Wagner wrote his libretto in the spring of 1877, in the knowledge that this would be his farewell to the stage, and began composing the music that August. Interestingly, the noble Prelude to Act I was sketched first, which shows that Wagner already had a complete vision of the interlocking motifs which would resound through the work, and it was performed under his direction in a concert at his Bayreuth house, Wahnfried, in 1878. By Christmas 1881, when he had promised to have the score of the opera ready for his wife Cosima to see, only a few pages remained to be orchestrated. Wagner conceived the work from the start in terms of his theatre at Bayreuth, where it was given its first sixteen performances under Hermann Levi’s baton in the summer festival of 1882. Only under his own close supervision, Wagner felt, could the deeply religious element of Parsifal be realised. Performance anywhere else was forbidden and even after Wagner’s death, his heirs banned any stage presentation until the copyright ran
Tracklisting
Tracklisting
Various Artists
Various
Various
Various
Tullio Serafin
Soloists
Soloists
Soloists
Soloists
Soloists
Soloists
Soloists
Soloists
Soloists
Soloists
