One of these "Parsifal" performances doesn't belong in the company of the others

WAGNER: Parsifal: Prelude and Good Friday Spell

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded December 1957

by Ken

We first heard the Prelude and opening of Act I of Parsifal in a March 2010 post called "Wagner, master of musical motion, Part 2," in which I wrote: "Our subject this week, you'll recall, is "musical motion," how performers find -- or don't -- what makes a piece of music move forward from the inside, how they re-create it with real energy and purpose instead of just grinding out one damned note after another."

The Jochum studio recording of the frequent concert coupling of the Parsifal Prelude and "Good Friday Spell" (from Act III), by no means a speedy performance, seems to me a shining example of the "re-created with real energy and purpose" kind.


IN 2010, OUR PRINCIPAL WAGNER TESTING GROUND . . .

Sunday Classics inquiry: How can Mime solve his problem?

WAGNER: Siegfried: Act I Prelude



Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, May and Oct. 1962

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded live, June-July 1992

Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded Dec. 1968 and Feb. 1969

Sadler's Wells Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI-Chandos, recorded live, August 1973

by Ken

I would have liked, but couldn't find, a nice image of a darkened theater to accompany these miraculous opening pages of Siegfried, the third installment in Wagner's cycle The Ring of the Nibelung, mostly occupied with music associated with the dwarflike Nibelungs, plunging us into the crisis faced by the Nibelung we will re-meet when the curtain rises, Mime (that's two syllables: MEE-muh), the brother of "the" Nibelung, Alberich, the Nibelung of the title.

This is such amazing,music, starting with that weird trio for two bassoons and bass tuba over hushed timpani, punctuated by those stabbing fluorishes first from the cellos, then from the violas. It's music that's murky, growly, mysterious, music that seems to me to demand a heightening of all the senses -- and above all of the imagination, for both performers and listeners. From the performers' standpoint, this is where your musicianship and musicianly instincts are tested, or rather exploited.

You'd have to be a real dunderhead to miss the potent brew of expectation and dread trembling to life here. As it happens, I heard just such a dunderheaded performance; that's one of two recent encounters that I want to tell you a little about, encounters that landed us here at the start of Siegfried, the third installment in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung.

I don't think any of our conductors here have anything to apologize for. Though I've arranged them in order of increasing range of inquisitiveness, Solti's performance seems to me quite lovely, alert and shiveringly alive. Barenboim, however, hears somewhat darker colors, and a more foreboding tread. Then Karajan really digs in, and finally Goodall takes the most searching view, taking nothing for granted here.


I HAD AN EXCHANGE WITH A NEW READER --