Wagner One Ring to rule them all...

Started by canninator, September 24, 2007, 03:37:41 AM

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Sergeant Rock

Quote from: bigshot on July 10, 2011, 10:24:45 AM
As for the Levine Ring, my objection is more with the conducting than the singing. The whole thing is boring.

I agree Rheingold and Walküre are relatively boring but I think he redeems himself, and redeems his conception, with the last two.

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

Mirror Image

Just bought my fourth Ring cycle:

[asin]B000068QD8[/asin]

Bill H.

Quote from: Sergeant Rock on July 10, 2011, 05:06:40 AM
True, but it is annoying to have to sit there with the remote in hand, trying to beat the player before it goes from Act I Walküre to Act II with no audible break. I need a break at that point; need to take a few deep breaths, have a moment of silence before plunging into the the next act.

Yeah, it looks pretty expensive now everywhere. When I first heard about it (five or six years ago), it was available very cheap. I paid something like 22 Euro.
The operas are available individually from Myto. Amazon France has some sellers that aren't charging an arm and leg.

Sarge

IIRC, the Moralt Ring on Myto is available from Berkshire Record Outlet for about US$5 a disk. 

Lisztianwagner

Quote from: Mirror Image on July 11, 2011, 08:20:56 AM
Just bought my fourth Ring cycle:

[asin]B000068QD8[/asin]

Good choice, Levine's Ring is beautiful! Once I saw the DVD, it was a spectacular performance :D

Ilaria
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." - Gustav Mahler

DavidRoss

Quote from: WagnerNut on July 08, 2011, 04:57:56 PM
Thanks, David. The Rings I keep coming back to as favorites are Janowski's, Karajan's and Barenboim's, each with their own weaknesses and strengths, of course. However, I love Solti's Gotterdammerung and Leinsdorf's Walkure more than any other. I often dream for a Leinsdorf Ring, and wonder, if only...
Jeremy, if you're still around I thought you might be interested to learn that I heard Karajan's Rheingold the other day and thought it was just beautiful.
"Maybe the problem most of you have ... is that you're not listening to Barbirolli." ~Sarge

"The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." ~Margaret Thatcher

Elgarian

#625
It was such an extraordinary thing to have the prospect of a Ring cycle performed in the north of England that it never occurred to me it would turn out to be less than a major event, personally. But last night I went to Opera North's Rheingold - which has received excellent reviews - and (I feel almost ashamed of myself to say it) it somehow seemed a bit 'ordinary'.

They'd tried so hard that I feel guilty about my lacklustre response, and I wonder if it was really just me failing to rise to the occasion. It was a concert performance, but they used three large video screens at the back showing appropriate images - water, fire, molten gold, sky etc - which was very effective. And the cast 'semi-acted' in front of the orchestra (rather than just standing and singing, if you see what I mean). The Rhinemaidens sang pleasantly - but really that makes my point: they sang merely pleasantly. Wotan was solid, but solid in a wooden sort of way. Some of the longer conversations seemed interminably long. The orchestra rose splendidly to meet occasional occasions, but there were stretches where they seemed to be just playing the notes. So the rainbow bridge section, for example, wasn't so much 'Bam! Wow! Oh my God! Incredible!', as 'Oh how interesting: a rainbow bridge'.

But at the end everyone seemed to think it was marvellous, and cheered, and clapped, and I felt a bit like someone who'd been at a great party but met all the wrong people. It's possible that this feeling of anticlimax is entirely of my own making. Maybe I've listened to too many different recorded Rheingolds in the last year or two, and am temporarily sated with it.

It lasted two and a half hours, but it felt like four. It might have been better not to have posted on this at all (to be consistent with my belief that negative reviews are usually worthless, reflecting the reviewer more than the reviewed), and I suppose my chief motivation was to unburden some of this morning's flatness and sense of disappointment. Even so, I can't help feeling uneasy about the prospects for Walkure, which they're doing next year.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Fl9PGS2szp4

knight66

Sometimes Wagner mystifies me and I think that to an extent my reactions are dictated by my own mood. Several years ago I attended Meistersingers in concert performance at the Edinburgh Festival. I would have paid money to get out of there, I have rarely been so overwhelmingly bored. As with your experience, the performance was warmly received. I felt it would be a long time until I again exposed myself to more than highlights. Having the libretto just made me yearn for them to get a move on, as my eye ran ahead to the acres of text to come.

And yet, and yet. Less than a year later I was listening to Karajan's Dresden recording and was entranced.

I don't know whether Karajan had the secret of alchemy. Perhaps the Edinburgh performance really was boring, but others were more inclined to find the good in it.

Mike
DavidW: Yeah Mike doesn't get angry, he gets even.
I wasted time: and time wasted me.

Elgarian

Quote from: knight66 on September 16, 2011, 02:04:53 AM
Sometimes Wagner mystifies me and I think that to an extent my reactions are dictated by my own mood. Several years ago I attended Meistersingers in concert performance at the Edinburgh Festival. I would have paid money to get out of there, I have rarely been so overwhelmingly bored. As with your experience, the performance was warmly received. I felt it would be a long time until I again exposed myself to more than highlights. Having the libretto just made me yearn for them to get a move on, as my eye ran ahead to the acres of text to come.

And yet, and yet. Less than a year later I was listening to Karajan's Dresden recording and was entranced.

I don't know whether Karajan had the secret of alchemy. Perhaps the Edinburgh performance really was boring, but others were more inclined to find the good in it.

An interesting account, that. Certainly my mood has something to do with it. Although my wife agreed with me that it was a lacklustre performance, she wasn't bored by it herself, and for her the two and a half hours passed like any other two and a half hours.

Yesterday I thought I'd allowed enough time to pass before just doing a check - and so put on the first CD of Solti's Rheingold. I found it electrifying. So I'm inclined to think that (a) the performance the other night really wasn't all that great; but (b) as with your Edinburgh audience, others were more able to find the good in it than I.

Mandryka

#628
I think Rheingold is hard to pull off because you have that very very long scene at the start, and then just when you think it's all over -- when the whole business about the gold and Fricka and the giants and the apples  seems sorted -  you actually have another 30 minutes or so left.  But it can work, and the Solti recording is very good.  A good Loge is important. In a prom production about 10 years ago with Rattle the whole thing was carried off by a Kazakhstanian singer called Oleg Bryjak who played Alberich wonderfully -- he was the real star, and made the whole evening just sparkle. Everyone else by comparison was was solid, if you know what I mean. I hadn't heard Oleg Bryjak  before and I haven't heard him since -- the didn't use him in the later operas unfortunately but I would go out of my way to see him again.

Opera's always like that. 90 per cent of the time it's not the most exciting experience. Maybe one time in 10  it is just wonderful. And even the greatest operas with all star casts can fall completely flat on the night. I remember a Figaro  with Haitink and John Tomlinson about 25 years ago at Covent Garden which was so boring I thought I was going to die . . .

I think you've probably got a greater chance of a successful evening in a concert performance.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

knight66

Quote from: Mandryka on September 16, 2011, 10:05:41 AM
.

Opera's always like that. 90 per cent of the time it's not the most exciting experience. Maybe one time in 10  it is just wonderful. And even the greatest operas with all star casts can fall completely flat on the night. I remember a Figaro  with Haitink and John Tomlinson about 25 years ago at Covent Garden which was so boring I thought I was going to die . . .



A good observation. Many years ago I walked out on a Figaro, only occasion I have done this....despite loving the music. It was the conductor that time, and I suggest it was Haitink's fault when you were so bored.

Mike
DavidW: Yeah Mike doesn't get angry, he gets even.
I wasted time: and time wasted me.

WagnerNut

Quote from: DavidRoss on September 10, 2011, 05:07:07 PM
Jeremy, if you're still around I thought you might be interested to learn that I heard Karajan's Rheingold the other day and thought it was just beautiful.

David, glad to hear it. I really think Karajan's Ring is my favorite at this point. Some say his Siegfried is weak but I don't agree. Personally, I prefer his Siegfried to any other I've heard. His Walkure is stunning, almost equaling Leinsdorf's to my ears. Also, I find the sound quality of the newly remastered version to be truly superb. If I had to pick just one Ring, it would be Karajan's. I'm just glad I don't have to!

Rinaldo

I was browsing Amazon and spotted this:

[asin]B005I735ZM[/asin]
Release date says October 17, but no further details. What really caught my eye was the price - 13£! What's the catch?

Renfield

#632
Quote from: Rinaldo on September 23, 2011, 10:01:12 PM
I was browsing Amazon and spotted this:

[asin]B005I735ZM[/asin]

Release date says October 17, but no further details. What really caught my eye was the price - 13£! What's the catch?

My eyes are too tired to make out the tiny print in the back, but I reckon it's the La Scala one (vs. the EMI-copyrighted RAI version).

[Which is apparently not copyrighted after all - see below. Please disregard the rest of this post. :)]

If so, it's also available in this perfectly satisfying incarnation:

[asin]B0012IWJ7G[/asin]


Re: the price, I'm inclined to suspect it reflects a lack of... attention in the transfer used. However, when we discussed the issue of such rough-'n'-ready, quasi-pirate (I still claim) transfers here before, plenty of people found them perfectly acceptable, and non-suspect.

Clearly, I'm not one of them! But your YMMV, and it certainly is a pretty small price to pay to find out. :)

Dancing Divertimentian

Quote from: Rinaldo on September 23, 2011, 10:01:12 PM
I was browsing Amazon and spotted this:

[asin]B005I735ZM[/asin]
Release date says October 17, but no further details. What really caught my eye was the price - 13£! What's the catch?

Not likely there's a catch. It's just another reissue of the now out of copyright EMI Ring (the other reissue I know of is on the Gebhardt label in purportedly better sound than EMI).

But questions about the restoration would be my main concern, especially at that super budget price.


Veit Bach-a baker who found his greatest pleasure in a little cittern which he took with him even into the mill and played while the grinding was going on. In this way he had a chance to have the rhythm drilled into him. And this was the beginning of a musical inclination in his descendants. JS Bach

Renfield

Quote from: Dancing Divertimentian on September 24, 2011, 06:34:20 AM
Not likely there's a catch. It's just another reissue of the now out of copyright EMI Ring (the other reissue I know of is on the Gebhardt label in purportedly better sound than EMI).

But questions about the restoration would be my main concern, especially at that super budget price.

Aha! I stand corrected: I didn't know that crucial bit of info, there, and thought Gebhardt had licensed it.

kishnevi

Are y'all sure about that out of copyright?  Because checking the liner notes for the budgety re-release of the RAI Ring EMI put out earlier this year, there is, besides a copyright date of 1991 for the digital remastering, a general copyright date of 1972.

Which suggests that EMI thinks it has some sort of copyright beyond the digital remastering.

But it also mentions that the original release was issued by arrangement with RAI.  So perhaps the original RAI tapes are not copyrighted, but the EMI masterings are?

At any rate, unless the transfers are absolutely horrible, 13GBP seems a pretty good bargain for this recording of the Ring.

Dancing Divertimentian

If there's any kind of copyright it doesn't appear anyone's interested in enforcing it. It turns out that Pristine Audio (<--- link) has released yet another transfer of this RAI Ring. That's three recent reissues now that I know of. (Four if you count EMI's own recent release).

I don't know of any recordings IN copyright that get distributed so liberally amongst competing labels. Especially when a major is involved. And if all these labels are licensing from Italian Radio simultaneously it'd be an odd arrangement. I would think something in the way of exclusively would be requisite for bothering to license at all.

But to further muddy the waters, in that Pristine Audio link, Pristine relates that they've chosen for their source material none other than EMI's own 1972 LP pressings! (1972 was the date of origin for initial release). Apparently it's the best source available.

So if EMI holds an actual copyright to their original LP masterings they're either A) not afraid to hand out freebies, or B) licensing their masterings to a competing record label for a duplicate reissue of something they've just released themselves.

I don't personally see the likelihood in either scenario.

But all my pontificating aside, the date of origin for the original RAI broadcasts/recordings was 1953. Well past the fifty year cutoff for copyright.

However....further comments?


Veit Bach-a baker who found his greatest pleasure in a little cittern which he took with him even into the mill and played while the grinding was going on. In this way he had a chance to have the rhythm drilled into him. And this was the beginning of a musical inclination in his descendants. JS Bach

mjwal

The EU Council has just voted to extend copyright from 50 to 70 years, so some firms specialising in releasing stuff from the 50s are going to go out of business. Whether any actual enforcing will take place is dubious - certainly, they don't seem to sue people downloading non-pop material from the net - probably not worth it.
Pristine claim theirs is the best transfer of the '53 Furtwängler Ring. I can only go by samples on their website, but it sounds over-filtered to me. Siegfried's forging song sounds more in-your-face exciting on the original EMI LPs, and the Gebhardt sounds even better. It doesn't sound too technically processed to me. My only reservation, in fact, has to do with Windgassen in Walküre: I don't like him in this role anyway (Suthaus or Vinay are much better, to stick to the 50s), but the Gebhardt has his voice sounding sort of phoned-in with a loudspeaker. As it is the only case of this happening on the set I can only assume this was in the source material. As I have neither the EMI LPs or CDs of Walküre, I can't tell. It's a minor drawback - listen to Siegmund/Suthaus '54 and then the rest '53, because both Mödl and Frantz were better a year earlier, and Furt wangled a bit more fire out of the orchestra.
The Violin's Obstinacy

It needs to return to this one note,
not a tune and not a key
but the sound of self it must depart from,
a journey lengthily to go
in a vein it knows will cripple it.
...
Peter Porter

kishnevi

Quote from: Dancing Divertimentian on September 24, 2011, 10:51:57 PM
If there's any kind of copyright it doesn't appear anyone's interested in enforcing it. It turns out that Pristine Audio (<--- link) has released yet another transfer of this RAI Ring. That's three recent reissues now that I know of. (Four if you count EMI's own recent release).

I don't know of any recordings IN copyright that get distributed so liberally amongst competing labels. Especially when a major is involved. And if all these labels are licensing from Italian Radio simultaneously it'd be an odd arrangement. I would think something in the way of exclusively would be requisite for bothering to license at all.

But to further muddy the waters, in that Pristine Audio link, Pristine relates that they've chosen for their source material none other than EMI's own 1972 LP pressings! (1972 was the date of origin for initial release). Apparently it's the best source available.

So if EMI holds an actual copyright to their original LP masterings they're either A) not afraid to hand out freebies, or B) licensing their masterings to a competing record label for a duplicate reissue of something they've just released themselves.

I don't personally see the likelihood in either scenario.

But all my pontificating aside, the date of origin for the original RAI broadcasts/recordings was 1953. Well past the fifty year cutoff for copyright.

However....further comments?

I think I see a thread out of the labyrinth here.  I think EMI has been licensing older remasterings when a newer remastering exists.  Evidence:  You can get the 1986 EMI remastering of the Furtwangler Tristan as a release from Brilliant (see the Brilliant Opera Collection)--but the 1990s remastering remains in EMIs catalogue.  A similar situation exists with the Callas Tosca available from Brilliant, and possibly/probably others. (I know about those two because I have the Brilliant versions). The most recent EMI release of the RAI ring uses the 1991 remastering; on this pattern we can envisage EMI licensing the 1972 masters while keeping the 1991 version for its own catalogue.

Quote from: mjwal on September 25, 2011, 06:35:04 AM
My only reservation, in fact, has to do with Windgassen in Walküre: I don't like him in this role anyway (Suthaus or Vinay are much better, to stick to the 50s), but the Gebhardt has his voice sounding sort of phoned-in with a loudspeaker. As it is the only case of this happening on the set I can only assume this was in the source material. As I have neither the EMI LPs or CDs of Walküre, I can't tell.

I don't remember anything like that from the EMI CDs--but it's been a little while already since I've listened.  I'll try to listen to some of it in the next few days and report back if I hear the problem you're talking about.

Dancing Divertimentian

Quote from: mjwal on September 25, 2011, 06:35:04 AM
The EU Council has just voted to extend copyright from 50 to 70 years....

Interesting, but perhaps therein lies the gray area. Not every country in the world abides by the EU's 70 year period. A large portion still hold to the 50 year period, which might provide advantageous loopholes.

At any rate, the RAI Ring doesn't act like a recording under copyright protection. And since there was lag time before the EU's 70 year cutoff became active perhaps that gave footing to any number of labels to start issuing - and keep issuing - recordings based on the 50 year cutoff.

Dunno...but record companies are doing it as we speak.


QuoteWhether any actual enforcing will take place is dubious...

That may very well be the impetus behind all of it...


Veit Bach-a baker who found his greatest pleasure in a little cittern which he took with him even into the mill and played while the grinding was going on. In this way he had a chance to have the rhythm drilled into him. And this was the beginning of a musical inclination in his descendants. JS Bach