In addition to his castles that attract many tourists each year (Sloss Neuschwanstein, the largest castle, was opened to visitors just seven weeks after Ludwig's death), Ludwig lives on in films, the most famous being those with Helmut Berger. Berger's role as the Fairy Tale King in Visconti's Ludwig II is perhaps his best. With Berger's portrayal, the development from sensitive young man to paranoid, alienated from everyone is a poignant, compelling watch and an artistic highlight for the actor.​

That other film in which Helmut Berger takes on the role of the King of Bavaria, Ludwig 1881, tells the story of Ludwig instructing an actor, Josef Kainz, to go on a trip with him in which Kainz must recite scenes from Schiller's Wilhelm Tell on location. In this traveling private theater, Kainz is for Ludwig besides a man who embodies beauty and art, perhaps even a desired friend, the link between Ludwig and the outside world. "Tell me what you see outside," Ludwig asks Kainz as they sit on a boat, the curtains closed. "Why don't you have the curtains opened then you can see for yourself," the actor replies. Ludwig does not want to see nature himself; he wants to know how an artist sees nature. He considers that more genuine. The actor who tells Ludwig what he sees when he looks outside is the link between man and nature. (Anticipating Mahler who once said to his visitor in the Austrian Alps, "You don't have to look outside, I have captured it in my symphony."). Nature is capricious and indifferent to man. With the image by which it is described, captured, nature is stripped of its whimsicality. By controlling nature, it is completely at the service of man.

Near the end of Ludwig 1881, the Bavarian King looks into a slide viewer at images of the entire world, from Africa to Asia, and he comes to the conclusion that he no longer needs to travel. Ludwig can stay home from now on and the trip with Josef Kainz would indeed be the last one he would undertake. He would continue to shut himself up in his castles and, above all, in his own head.

Ludwig is a man of privilege. Everyone around him is at his disposal. He is, like a collector, always looking for those stimuli that please and move him. He makes himself increasingly unfit for life, for the outside world. He is spoiled but the development of media, since the late nineteenth century, has now made us all kings in our own kingdom. Ludwig's legacy endures not only in the stone edifices that draw crowds, but in the echoes of his sequestered soul, mirroring our own entrapment within the all-encompassing dominion of screens. As we navigate our augmented and alternative realms, we, too, become modern-day monarchs, ensnared in our palaces of pixels and code.

4 November 1882 (Venice, Italy)
Over coffee we discuss the little book about Bismarck, and then we move on to America, which R. expects one day to become the dominating world power. 

14 October 1882 (Venice, Italy)
After lunch R. asks me to read a review of Jules Verne's latest book*, in which the Germans are ridiculed in the most tasteless way.

13 September 1879
Bismarck, whom R. compares with Robespierre; just as the latter could think of nothing to do with his power except keep on seeking out suspects and having them beheaded, Bismarck can only keep discovering new dangers as an excuse for strengthening the army. 

11 June 1871
"Cosima, I shall still be able to compose," R. calls to me in the morning. He then goes to the piano and plays something which will, I believe, introduce the scene by moonlight between Alberich and Hagen.

 21 May 1871
At midday I told R. how curious it was that all performances (5th Symphony, Tristan, Meistersinger), no matter how good, leave me to a certain extent cold, but I feel ecstatic when R. talks to me about Beethoven, when he tells me of his first conceptions; I cannot put myself in the position of the audience but, rather, feel as if the work becomes disassociated from me as soon as it takes on an outer form. R. says he feels exactly the same way, and he knows that we shall regard our Nibelungen theater with cold pleasure, watching and observing. "For ourselves we do not need it, our pleasures lie in the idea." 

15 August 1870
Marie Muchanoff wrote yesterday that my father [Franz Liszt] sobbed throughout the whole of Die Walküre, and she had been unable to watch the scene between Brünnhilde and Siegmund for a third time, so much was she affected by it.

7 August 1870
Letter from Graz with 100 florins; Der Fliegende Holländer has been a great succes there; the money is welcome, for we are very short of it. 

​This morning, over a cup of coffee and the morning paper, I listened to two versions of Anton Bruckner's Sixth Symphony, one of my favourite symphonies by the Austrian composer and organist. The first one conducted by Joseph Keilberth. A renowned opera conductor who was a familiar face in Bayreuth in the 1950s. His 1955 Bayreuther Ring cycle is regarded as benchmark and he is considered, not in the least because of that 1955-Ring, the first stereo recording of that work, as a Wagnerian of repute. It is not surprising that Bruckner also suited him well. His Bruckner recordings are a lot fewer in number, but the quality is no less.​

​Where Keilberth brings Bruckner's score to life, Sergiu Celibidache reduces it to a petty distortion of ideas about a grand and compelling life not yet been tested by reality. Celibidache's reading brings together two opposites in the worst possible way: adolescent dreams of grandeur in an over-analyzed approach. With Celibidache it is as if the music is no longer trusted to stand on its own feet and is considered only to find its way on the tight leash of a conductor.  (That is the big difference with, for example, Knappertsbusch  who is no speed demon either but whose Bruckner I very much enjoy. Knap at least puts his trust in the music and the magic of the moment.) The devout images that Celi conjures up may not seem out-of-sync with the devout Bruckner, the lifelong virgin with his childlike clumsiness towards women, but it does the Austrian in his most frivolous symphony a serious disservice ("Die Sechste ist die Keckste", according to Bruckner himself). With a sparkling rendition, Keilberth provides Bruckner with the splendour he so often lacked in real life. Keilberth allows Bruckner to transcend his limitations as a human being through his art. Celibidache denies Bruckner this testimony of true greatness. He denies Bruckner the merites of his artistry with which the composer tried to pull himself out of the swamp of his own shortcomings. Anton's fate is in cruel hands of performers such as Celibidache, who here shows himself to be the greatest conceivable opposite to the man whom he was to succeed in 1954 as chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wilhelm Fürtwangler  (perhaps the most exhilarating and demon-driven Bruckner conductor of all time - after Furtwangler's death, the vacant position of chief conductor of the Berliner went to Herbert van Karajan;  it left Celibidache with a grudge against Karajan and about every other conductor other than himself but that's another story). The grandeur Celibidache seeks is ludicrous; his Bruckner is slow and boring. His Münchner Orchestra is well versed in this repertoire but Celi makes them sound like a carnival band on Ash Wednesday. Like an ensemble that has lost all energy and is lurching along in an exercise on autopilot. A big disappointment. What earns this man his title of Brucknerian not only remains well hidden here, the accolades can be stowed away in the cupboard with the deepest drawers, this performance also fails to explore the terrain where music should ultimately have the last word. Where Keilberth grants Bruckner a place in the fullness of life with an execution that is complety self-evident, Celibidache directs him to a piece of wasteland where in vain he suspects the foundations of a cathedral. To deny Bruckner life by endowing him with a mind-numbing performance of his most uplifting symphony goes beyond the defect of a performance in which perfunctory premises lead to unsatisfactory ends. It is more severe. It can be, to remain in the spirit of the God-abiding Austrian composer, considered a sin.

CONVERSATION WITH VON KARAJAN
By HERBERT PENDERGAST

THE FOLLOWING conversation with Herbert von Karajan occurred in Berlin this spring. It took place during various intermissions in Mr. von Karajan's rehearsals with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The program he was preparing consisted of Bach's Magnificat in D and Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. 
​

Composers and Their Music

QUESTION. We know of your interest in baroque music from the number of baroque composers featured in your programs—Handel, Corelli, Locetelli, Geminiani, and, of course, Bach, whose Magnificat you are now rehearsing. What general criteria govern your performances of baroque music?
ANSWER. First of all, the knowledge derived from a study of baroque tradition. We know, for example, that the composers of that time were very much freer than today. Much of their music is now performed as if the notes were unalterable when actually they were the result, frequently, of free improvisation. In addition, I go back to the original scores in preparing baroque works, whenever possible. For Bach this is the edition we now have in Germany, with only the bare notes and without all of the corrections and additions by later musicians who tried to decide where the dynamics should be placed. Finally, as a practical matter, I place enormous importance on the continuo. When I hear this music played with a cembalo continuo, which you see but do not hear, it becomes for me completely academic and uninteresting.
 
Q. Do you approve of orchestral transcriptions of baroque music for solo instruments—for example, the Stokowski transcriptions of Bach’s organ works?
A. I do not like this practice at all. Such transcriptions turn Bach's organ music into orchestral showpieces. The less one tampers with Bach, the greater his music becomes. If a good musician studies the original bare notes. the proper tempi and dynamics will come to him as a natural expression of the music; and he will find it quite unnecessary to overamplify the original sound.
 
Q. It is a frequent practice today to more or less reorchestrate the symphonic works of Schumann when performing them. Do you do this?
A. No. l use the normal orchestra score. It is true, of course, that most or his works for orchestra sound as if they had been composed for the piano. As an orchestrator, Schumann frequently broke up the rhythmic continuity of his music with choppy passages for the strings. I am cognizant of the many passages which require re-balancing, and this I have no hesitation in doing. If Schumann's scores were played without this re-balancing, they would sound very muddy.

Q. Your interest in modern music has led you to introduce to Berlin audiences new works by Stravinsky, Martin, Fortner, Blacher, Messiaen, Shostakovich, Milhaud, Liebermann and Henze. The Antigone [Antifone] by Henze created something very rare in Berlin audiences—a scandal. Would you care to comment on this music?
A. The Henze work is fascinating. In it he has found a means of expression which is completely new. The orchestra enjoyed it very much because it was an unusual challenge. One difficulty which arises in listening to the work is that Henze has occasionally misjudged the timbres of the instruments he employs and the musical line becomes difficult to follow. I will perform this work again with the Berlin Philharmonic for the Musica Viva series in Munich this year.
 
Q. Do you believe that there is a danger that modern music has become so complicated and difficult to assimilate that the composer could easily become completely separated from his audience?
A. One difficulty which prevents audiences from adapting more readily to modern music is that the technical demands and expense in performing many of the works preclude frequent performances in the concert hall. For example, Stockhausen's Gruppen for three orchestras would cost about $25,000 to perform. For this reason, many modern composers depend completely on commissions and radio stations for their support—not concert audiences. I think it is a help to audiences if you balance something unfamiliar against something which they know very well. I always try to balance my programs in this way: if each work has something to say, it will gain from association with the others.

Q. Do you think that the music of composers like Boulez and Webern will be easily understood by the musical public of the next generation?
A. I am quite certain that the next generation will have no problem in understanding most of the music of today. Think of the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra. Twenty years ago it was considered inacccessible; today it is a classic. Think of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. When we perform it today, it sounds like a concerto grosso of Handel. With the decline of melodic inspiration in music, the serial techniques of today are a necessary self-imposed discipline for the composer.

Q. And those who listen to this music must impose upon themselves a discipline as great!
A. One is not born with an understanding of Beethoven, either!​

Q. Do you personally like all of the new works which you conduct?
A. Yes, otherwise I would never perform them. I do not believe in conducting music one doesn't feel simply to give it a hearing. If I respond to a new work, I may live with it some time before I will perform it, however. The Schoenberg Variations for Orchestra I studied for years before I conducted them. As for even Le Sacre du Printemps: which I performed recently in Vienna and am making up my mind to perform this work!

Q. In a work, such as Le Sacre du Printemps is it a help to you to study the composer's own recording of the music?
A. Yes, of course, although we see by following this recording with the score where Stravinsky sometimes fails to observe his own markings! Is Stravinsky happy with his recording? I don't know. What I have had to do is to study the score and to decide for myself how successful Stravinsky has been as a conductor in realizing the meaning of the music. In this particular work one thing is clear to me: we must avoid the "tyranny of the bar line" and treat the rhythms organically.
 
Accoustics 

Q. The Musikvereinssaal in Vienna where you performed this same Le Sacre du Printemps has completely different accoustical properties from the Hochschule für Musik-saal here in Berlin. Do you make any effort to adjust your dynamics when performing the same work in different halls?
A. No. This work, for instance, I will play with all possible force and power. If the hall there can take it, so much the better. Because of the endless number of halls this orchestra has performed in, it is an interesting phenomenon that the Berlin Philharmonic is able to adjust the dynamics of its playing automatically in any auditorium. Even if the orchestra were to play in an unknown hall, it would take the musicians only a minute: when they tune their instruments, they already know what the sound is going to be like.

Ballet and Opera 

Q. If you were to conduct Le Sacre du Printemps as a ballet, would your tempi be different?
A. No they would not. Someday I must do it as a ballet. Last year I saw the Brussels production at Salzburg. My scenic conception would be completely different from this–stark, primitive, like the paintings of 2,000 years ago in the caves at Lascaux.
 
Q. Do you have definite ideas for staging every opera you conduct?
A. No. I would not try to stage an opera with a milieu like La Bohème or La Traviata. There are plenty of directors who can do this sort of thing marvelously. When the staging becomes an important part of the dynamics of the music, however, I must stage it myself because I have never been able to find anyone  who can realize my conceptions. The scenic backstatic throughout the production is a dead concept in operatic staging. The world of Tristan [und Isolde] changes from minute to minute and the staging must reflect this. In Othello the staging, by some sort of striking simplicity, must be in absolute conformity with the changing moods of the music. My new production of Il Trovatore at Salzburg last year is something else, however. Here the plot of the opera is complete nonsense. There is only the protection by the music of basic human emotions—love, hate, jealousy, revenge, and so on. The staging also must project these emotions and that is what I tried to achieve in this production.
 
Q. What do you think of Wieland Wagner's concepts of operatic staging?
A. I have not followed his work. Normally we never come together because I am in Salzburg while he is at Bayreuth.

Q. Do you believe that opera must always be performed in the original language?
A. Absolutely. A translation of the libretto destroys the special relationship between the words and the music. As for those in the opera houses who claim to follow every word, most of the words, in their own language are lost to them: the orchestra and chorus blank them out a good part of the time and for the rest of the time, the enunciation of the singers is so poor that almost no one can understand them. And finally, most opera libretti are nonsense to begin with. Can we improve them through translations?
 
Q. Strauss thought that it was very important for some of his operas to be performed in the language of the audience.
A. To my knowledge. this was never done with great success. The ideal is to have the language of the singers the same as that of the composer. Even a good singer must sing a role forty or fifty times to really understand it. How many times do you think Der Rosenkavalier would be sung in Italian at La Scala? How much better for the audience to learn the language of the opera!
 
Q. Strauss once likened the role of a great opera house to that of an art gallery where one could hear the greatest operatic masterpieces in permanent exhibition with the greatest singers and conductors. Is this your ideal as Artistic Director of the Vienna Opera?
A. Yes, of course, this is my ideal.The difficulty is that now it is impossible to fulfill this concept in any opera house. The idea of the operatic ensemble-produced records, this complacency is no longer possible! Also, records are a wonderful instrument for self-judgement. As a young conductor I had many faults. For one thing, I was always hurrying the tempo of everything I conducted. People tried to tell me this, but I wouldn't listen to them. When I finally began to study my recordings, I realized they were right. Today when I hear these early records, I feel I must have been drunk when making them!
 
Q. Can a recording, however technically perfect as a performance, hope to duplicate the directness and immediacy of a great concert hall performance?
A. Sometimes when I hear a record of [Sviatoslav] Richter, I wonder if the playing could be better in the concert hall. In a concert, of course the human element can cause mistakes and yet the concert can still be marvelous. In a recording we strive for technical perfection. And yet I remember one recording—the Last performance by Dinu Lipatti at the Lucerne Festival. All of us knew that this great artist had only a short time left. The Mozart C-major Concerto which we performed was a wonderful living performance. How appropriate for Lipatti to have played Mozart at this concert. Many years later tapes of the broadcast were located in the hands of private collectors and a recording was pressed by Columbia. From a technical standpoint the recording isn't much. It is certainly, however, proof that recordings can convey the living spirit of the music. 
 
Q. The point is that this recording was made from an actual performance. Is there no good reason to record more public performances?
A. Yes, but this sort of thing does not make the record companies and high fidelity enthusiasts happy. They don't want the extraneous noises produced in an actual concert.
 
Conducting Techniques

Q. In rehearsing the orchestra, you seem to put great emphasis on conveying the proper rhythm to the players, is this perhaps the most difficult task for the conductor?
A. Yes, it is. It Is very strange. but with our race and in our latitude, rhythmic control is the most difficult thing for a musician to achieve. There is hardly a musician among us who can play the same note five times without minor variation. Part of the fault is that rhythm is never taught correctly to young musicians. For the Negro or African, it comes naturally—this sense of rhythm. As for myself, I can tolerate wrong notes, but I cannot stand an unstable rhythm. Perhaps I was born in Africa in another existence. Once in Vienna after we had finished a recording session, I surprised everyone by telling them that I was going to hear a Louis Armstrong concert. When they asked why? I told them that to go to a concert and know that for two hours the music would not get faster or slower was a great joy to me.

Q. Would it be possible to separate the functions of the two arms in conducting?
A. No, they work integrally. The same functions would be performed if you had three arms or only one. I have conducted many performances with my hand in a sling. Without my arms I could still give the beat with my nose and with my shoulders.

Q. What are the advantages of being able to conduct without a score?
A. You are able to look at the whole work better because you have in your mind the complete picture of it. It is amusing to observe opera singers who sing whole operatic roles without resorting to the prompter, stare into the notes when they sing a short solo in the Brahms Requiem. These notes can have a truly hypnotic effect!
 
Q. However, you employ the score when conducting a work like Le Sacre du Printemps.
A. Yes, I sometimes use a score. This is mostly when I am performing a work with which the orchestra is unfamiliar. It can help to prevent trouble before it occurs. As for conducting in the opera house without a score, it has become very difficult for me with over 23 operas in the repertoire and with the constant shifting from one opera to the next.
 
Q. Aside from Toscanini, who were the conductors whom you admired most in your youth and do you admire these same conductors today?
A. Bruno Walter, of course, and Richard Strauss. Strauss as a conductor had a natural feeling for tempi. He never said very much but his slightest indication produced positive results in the orchestra. Wilhelm Fürtwangler ...
 
Q. The newspapers would have it that you have spent your life struggling against Furtwängler’s musical position and prestige.
A. It is always like that in the newspapers: one makes a struggle out of everything. We were never close as individuals but I attended his rehearsals at every opportunity. One day I am going to write a book about conductors who have influenced me and I will devote a chapter to Furtwängler. He was the first conductor who divided the responsibility for the interpretation between himself and the orchestra. Under him the Berlin Philharmonic learned to make music in the way that a string quartet does. However, forcing the orchestra to take the initiative and to make its own decisions in changing from one episode to the next was sometimes at the risk of imperfect ensemble. Although I have not tried to change this style of playing, I have attempted to superimpose on it some of the precision which Toscanini with his absolute control imposed on his orchestras. It is this marriage of orchestral initiative with discipline that I strive to use as a basis for all my performances with the Berlin Philharmonic.

To restrict oneself to one version per composition. I manage with Vivaldi's Four Seasons but not with Wagner, as mentioned, and not with Mahler (and not with many others, the list of composers is, in fact, growing). In my aural travels through Mahler's second symphony, the quest for resurrection, I found myself, perhaps suprisingly, attached to Hans Vonk's rendition with the Residentie Orchestra The Hague from 1986. Surprisingly because its sonics are a bit muffled and its reading is somewhat restrained. 

This is Mahler played like he is Beethoven. More than relying on Romantic gestures this is a Mahler who prefers a more "classical" approach. Like Mahler doesn't dare to follow his own Romantic footsteps. Like he is afraid of the implications of his own musical intentions and innovations. This is a reading of Mahler, relaxed yet swift (the whole symphony fits on one CD), that displays everything in a natural, organic way and doesn't care (too much) about making a sonic impression. Here Mahler seems to understand that true heaviness is the result of the cumulation of all ideas, and not of the emphasizing of just a few. Pretty much he lets the music take care of itself and by doing so he seems almost shy in comparison to some of the big names in the catalogue (I think of Bernstein whose readings of Mahler's Second - both his first and second offering in his two Mahler cycles - are terribly overblown). It's, for all its imperfections, the instrumental execution is far from razor-sharp, a performance that's lyrical, remarkable capable of putting the extremes in Mahler's score in the right perspective (its "Urlicht" by Mahler-champion Jard van Nes comes out most seductive and the climax at the end sounds as the natural consequence of everything that preceeds it). Seemlingly effortless in achieving its musical aims, and, perhaps of its relatively restrained approach that invites more than it imposes, this performance never fails to move me and is, like a resurrection that lives up to its name, something that keeps coming back to me. Like a deep-rooted wish to defeat the temporality of life. A wish that, despite or thanks to the knowledge that one is immortal for only a limited time, seems persistent.

Parsifal was the only Wagner opera that was composed exclusively with the acoustics of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth in mind. It was the first opera that was performed in Bayreuth after the second World War. From its premiere in 1882 to the first cycle of performances in Bayreuth after World War II (in 1951) the opera was considered a "life-changing" event for those who were lucky enough to see it (among them Gustav Mahler, who attended the opera in 1883).  

This "life-altering" experience took me quite some time to digest. The opera comes pretty close to an oratory and can be an exercise in slowing down (I do appreciate Knappertsbusch '51 now but Goodall got me lost between the notes). It was not until I heard the Boulez Parsifal from 1970 that the music started to make sense to me. Thanks to the relatively fast tempi  from Pierre Boulez - that were on par with Clemens Krauss' and Richard Strauss' renditions of Parsifal in Bayreuth. Boulez himself noted that his tempi were not that much faster than the tempi  Hermann Levi conducted during the premiere in 1882 (in 1966 Boulez used 61 minutes for the second act vs. Levi 62 minutes, 70 minutes vs. 75 for Levi in the 3rd act and 100 minutes vs. 107 in the first act). Parsifal is often considered a solemn mass for true believers with its broad tempi to emphasize the spiritual grandeur of the whole thing. But it  was the Parsifal from Clemens Krauss that converted me. Lively and swinging are not the words that are used to characterize the piece Parsifal is but Krauss does a wonderful job to make a case for it. I have the Andromeda remastering from 2009 and although the mono sound might not be for hifi-buffs the quality is more than acceptable for me. I noticed that after my visit to Bayreuth, having heard the famous acoustics first hand,  I started to extrapolate the 50's Bayreuth sound into an impressive theater experience at home.

If Richard Strauss’ Salome from 1905 marked the beginning of 20th century opera, ​Klas Torstensson’s The Expedition from 1999 would mark a worthy closing. It tells the story from Salomon Andrée’s ill-fated effort to reach the North Pole by balloon in 1897. The Expedition digs into musical means as diverse as dodecaphony, music concrete and a Puccini-kind of lyricism, and yet it makes one, organic whole in which musical boundaries do not seem to exist. Together with the use of electronics to generate the sounds of the rustle of the northern lights and crawling ice, this opera (the libretto is in Swedish) delivers a world of sound that is both hauntingly beautiful and harrowing creepy. I live with a borrowed copy of the CDs for a few years now (the rightful owner doesn't miss them that much and the CD of The Expedition seems to be out of print now – only a MP3-version is available on Amazon) and would welcome a re-issue of this masterpiece on CD that includes the beautiful and very informative booklet. It premiered at the Holland Festival in 1999 and was only performed four times since (in concert performances). With all the excitement that surrounded the premiere of the, thematical related, opera South Pole by Miroslav Srnka in mind (trailer South Pole - I hope to see it somewhere in the future) I would like to make a case for a stage production of Torstensson’s Expedition. Because it is too good to neglect and it sounds like the future of opera. It will of course not be without challenge to make a staging that is dramatically convincing but it would be well worth to witness the effort.

For describing the music that accompanies  the building of the balloon (noises of labour, not unlike Siegfried’s forging of the sword), the flight of the balloon and its crashing on the ice I delve into my vocabulary and come up with something like “industrial sound”, “atonal finesse” (the composer knows his Anton Webern) and “coloured noises”. It is counterparted by the arias of the fiancée of expedition member Nils Strindberg (sung by Torstensson’s wife Charlotte Riedijk) who is assigned with a few beautiful Puccini-like arias in which she’s lamenting her fate (of being left behind) and the fate of her spouse. The musical contrast between the icy world of the men and her own couldn’t be bigger but they don’t fall apart. They speak to each other in different languages but they stay connected. Her final aria after the men disappeared on the ice is heartbreaking beautiful. Torstensson composes without being dogmatic about the style or musical niche he is supposed to write in. This music is an experience on its own and reminds me of Gustav Mahler's attempts to catch nature into music. Certainly Torstensson’s music is different from Mahler's but it shares with him a combination of intuition, primal energy and musical complexity that forms an impossible-to-resist invitation to pay this unique world of sound a visit.

Tannhäuser is Wagner's fifth opera. The story goes that famous tenor Jon Vickers - who sang many Wagner roles - refused to play this one because he found the character Tannhäuser despicable (it was due to his Christian believes that he thought so). Tannhäuser is seduced by Venus and lives in the mountain, that bears her name, a life of sin. 

In an attempt to bring opera to the people as a home theatre experience producer John Culshaw seasoned the Wagner recordings he made for Decca with all kinds of sounds that made the recordings in question by times sound like a radio play. In this Tannhäuser with Georg Solti at the helm that is no different. Solti’s conducting of Wagner troubles me. His status as a Wagner conductor is undisputed but it just doesn’t seem to work for me. With Decca he worked himself through the Wagner catalogue but the results never reach the echelon of benchmark recordings. To put it short: his conducting falls short in story telling. Solti is a man of large gestures and of the bombast Wagner so often is associated with. And perhaps that’s why I don’t like him. I don’t listen to Wagner because of the supposed loudness and sonic mayhem (I put on a Napalm Death record if I want that) but for the musical subtlety and the sheer quality of the notes that both are unequalled in the world of music drama. As a conductor Solti fails to show the listener the layers in Wagner’s musical world. It fails to transcends that world into a world of the mind in which no boundaries exist and in which the listener is more than happy to get lost. Instead it reduces a place of three dimensions into flatland. It’s Wagner for the fitness room but I put on some midtempo metal if I am looking for a soundtrack for the gym thank you. As a recording this Tannhäuser is like a movie that got his head stuck in the special effects department without having a clue about the lyricism that makes a story tick. And that’s all a big pity because, as always for Decca, the singers for Solti are top notch (although Rene Kollo might be an acquired taste for many). Especially Christa Ludwig as Venus is superb. She knows how to seduce a man but like Tannhäuser himself, who doesn’t want to be in the mountain of Venus any longer, this listener takes a run from it.