Well, I'm working up to the Ring. But it's important to remember that, throughout most of the 19th century, Tannhäuser was Wagner's most popular work. With Lohengrin, Der Fliegende Holländer, and Rienzi—early works all, it was one of the few Wagner operas that most operagoers would have heard. Not only that, a good case can be made that the opera's unprecedented sensuality, its convincing musical…
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When I suggested to editor John Atkinson that the subject of my first "Building A Library" be Wagner's Tannhäuser, furrows ploughed his boyish brow. "Why such minor Wagner? Why not the Ring?"
Mixing the Paris and Dresden versions, the Wagner-built Bayreuth Festspielhaus has staged its own composite production (sanctioned by Wagner) over the years; the Paris Venusberg Music is included, but from the very first entry of the voices, it's Dresden all the way to the end.
But in all of these permutations, Tannhäuser can still be a bitter pill to take. Even in the Dresden version, the music ranges from the sublime (the pilgrims' chorales, the Act III prelude, the Rome Narration) to the ridiculous (the overdone part-writing that closes Acts I and II) to the merely humdrum (the Act II…
Italian bootlegs of the Bayreuth Version, usually from the '50s, pop up and disappear overnight, usually in awful sound and joyless performances. The 1954 Bayreuth Festival performance on Hunt 3 CDLSMH 34032 is no exception, Joseph Keilberth's forceful if grim conducting notwithstanding. An exhausted-sounding Ramon Vinay forces himself, barking, through the title role, with never an ounce of joy in his voice even in Act II; his Tannhäuser sounds irredeemably dissolute, hopelessly cynical throughout, reminding one, for all the wrong reasons, just how wretched a Minnesinger this is. It's…
The Sinopoli Recording
WAGNER: Tannhäuser
Plácido Domingo, Tannhäuser; Cheryl Studer, Elisabeth; Agnes Baltsa, Venus; Andreas Schmidt, Wolfram; Matti Salminen, Landgraf; William Pell, Walther; Kurt Rydl, Biterolf; Clemens Bieber, Heinrich; Oskar Hillebrandt, Reinmar; Barbara Bonney, Shepherd; Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Philharmonia Orchestra, Giuseppe Sinopoli
Deutsche Grammophon 427 625-2 (3 CDs only). 1989. Klaus Hiemann, eng.; Günther Breest, Wolfgang Stengel, Claudia Hamann, prods. DDD. TT: 3:16:14
Which brings me to the second recording of the…
Sidebar: Tannhäuser, a Synopsis
Briefly, the argument, brewed of Wagner's usual conflation of various legends, with a soupçon of fact, and set in 12th-century Thuringia:
Tannhäuser is a Minnesinger, a composite of two historical figures: the ne'er-do-well minnesinging Tannhäuser, who lived somewhat later and was for centuries the subject of cautionary lays; and Heinrich von Ofterdingen (Wagner retains "Heinrich" as Tannhäuser's Christian name), whose travels and trafficking with the almost certainly legendary magician Klingsor led him to a cave of timeless delights not unlike…
As someone who started out as a classically trained musician but who then stepped sideways into rock, I'm fascinated by the one music I've never played: jazz. It seems to me that the essential difference between a performance of a classical work and a jazz performance is that in the former, the musicians use their technique to breathe life into dead notes on a page, while in good jazz, the performer not only applies a similar level of technical expertise, but also has simultaneously to have all of music theory at the fingertips in order to decide what the next note should be. It is a rare…
Years ago, I uncovered a piece of my father's secret soul. Hidden in the back of a closet was a treasure trove I'd give anything to possess today. It was my father's stash of mementos from his service in the Eighth Air Force during WWII: his A-2 leather and lamb's-wool flight jacket, a silk scarf with a detailed topographic map of his Theater of Operations imprinted on it, his "50 mission hat" (an Air Corps-lid with the shaping frame removed, carefully crumpled through the middle so that every mother's son would know he was no FNG), his ruptured duck, and, thrust in one pocket, his old…
Sidebar 1: Jack English auditions the Grado Reference Series One headphones
I'm an audiophile; worse yet, I'm a reviewer. It's my job to hear some of the most incredible audio gear on the face of the planet. So it isn't much of a surprise that I love the cutting-edge stuff!
I kept repeating thoughts like these in my mind like a mantra as I sauntered along, walking from Penn Station to Rockefeller Center one morning on my way to work. But as I did, I must have looked like the Cheshire Cat. My grin stretched from ear to ear. Deep in my shoulder bag was a Radio Shack Optimus CD-3400…
Sidebar 2: Specifications
Description: Open-air, dynamic, supra-aural headphones. Frequency range: 12Hz–30kHz. Nominal impedance: 32 ohms. Sensitivity at 1 kHz: 96dB. Weight: 9 oz.
Price: $695. Approximate number of dealers: 510.
Manufacturer: Grado Laboratories, Inc., 4614 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11220. Tel: (718) 435-5340. Fax: (718) 633-6941. Web: www.gradolabs.com.
HAYDN: Symphonies 99 & 102
Frans Brüggen, Orchestra of the 18th Century
Philips 434 077-2 (CD only). Sieuwer Verster, prod.; Jaap Bogaart, eng. DDD. TT: 48:57
HAYDN: Symphonies 100 & 104
Frans Brüggen, Orchestra of the 18th Century
Philips 434 096-2 (CD only). DDD. TT: 53:35
Frans Brüggen, Orchestra of the 18th Century
Philips 434 077-2 (CD only). Sieuwer Verster, prod.; Jaap Bogaart, eng. DDD. TT: 48:57
HAYDN: Symphonies 100 & 104
Frans Brüggen, Orchestra of the 18th Century
Philips 434 096-2 (CD only). DDD. TT: 53:35
Recordings occasionally come along that put all-too-familiar repertory into a strikingly new and revealing perspective. So it is with these two releases. Though not without minor blemishes, Brüggen's readings present a bold Haydn, at once dramatic and assertive, yet lyrical, graceful, and…