Cosima's diary - Sunday, 25 December 1870 

About this day, my children, I can tell you nothing-nothing about my feelings, nothing about my mood, nothing, nothing. I shall just tell you, drily and plainly, what happened. When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew ever louder, I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music! After it had died away, R. came in to me with the five children and put into my hands the score of his Symphonic Birthday Greeting. I was in tears, but so, too, was the whole household; R. had set up his orchestra on the stairs and thus consecrated our Tribschen forever! The Tribschen Idyll—thus the work is called. — At midday Dr. Sulzer arrived, surely the most important of R.'s friends! After breakfast the orchestra again assembled, and now once again the Idyll was heard in the lower apartment, moving us all profoundly (Countess B. was also there, on my invitation); after it the Lohengrin wedding procession, Beethoven's Septet, and, to end with, once more the work of which I shall never hear enough! — Now at last I understood all R.'s working in secret, also dear Richter's trumpet (he blazed out the Siegfried theme splendidly and had learned the trumpet especially to do it), which had won him many admonishments from me. "Now let me die," I exclaimed to R. "It would be easier to die for me than to live for me," he replied. In the evening R. reads his Meistersinger to Dr. Sulzer, who did not know it; and I take as much delight in it as if it were something completely new. This makes R. say, "I wanted to read Sulzer Die Meistersinger, and it turned into a dialogue between us two."

Parsifal (Bayreuth ‘53) with Clemens Krauss at the helm. In the same year that this wonderful Parsifal was performed Krauss gave us an equally wonderful Ring des Nibelungen. A performance that became my favorite live Ring. Listening to Krauss in Wagner makes me wonder if there ever was a better conductor for this music. ​
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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.

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.

Searching for the perfect Wagner opera recording can be a frustrating endeavor. With so many elements at play in a Musikdrama - especially in the Ring operas - there’s almost always something left to be desired. You often find yourself wishing things were just a little different: a different singer in a particular role, a different tempo in a key passage, or simply better sound quality.

And yet, for all my love of pristine hi-fi sound, many of my favorite recordings are historical ones. One that stands out is Die Walküre conducted by Bruno Walter. This 1935 studio recording has that rare quality of feeling nearly perfect. Even the mono sound holds up remarkably well. The CD remaster suffers from none of the usual distractions—no hiss, no distracting artifacts—just music that breathes.

​The one major drawback is that only the first act was completed in those 1935 sessions. Originally, the recording was scheduled to take place in Berlin, but with the rise of the Nazis, that became impossible. For Jewish artists, Germany was no longer an option. Walter, along with Lauritz Melchior (Siegmund) and Lotte Lehmann (Sieglinde), relocated to Vienna, where they recorded the first act and parts of the second. The rest of the second act had to wait until 1938, when it was completed in Berlin under Bruno Seidler-Winkler, as Walter had already fled Europe for America. The third act followed years later, recorded in 1945 under Artur Rodziński. The result is a kind of patchwork Walküre.
 
It’s the first act, under Walter, that earns a solid five stars. A close personal friend of Gustav Mahler, Walter possessed an intuitive understanding of this music that makes it endlessly rewarding to revisit. Melchior and Lehmann, as the Wälsung twins, may be the most convincing pair I’ve heard to date. Lehmann, in particular, is magnificent. Her voice overflows with compassion. She offers her fugitive brother the solace he seeks - and, in doing so, gives the listener something just as precious: the sense that opera recordings like this don’t just document great performances - they offer something close to salvation.