Klemperer on Wagner

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What Klemperer has suffered from practically every harassment that can strike an artist in his career--political persecution, economic hardship, one blow of ill health after another, every misfortune worse than the last--must surely predispose any listener in his favor; but, more important, how this man has surmounted these disasters and reached a summit occupied by few living conductors brings special point to the album. The booklet by Walter Legge that accompanies these records gives the full flavor of the Klemperer career through a series of excellent photographs. It also contains expert Wagnerian analyses by William Mann.

In the course of Legge's article, Wieland, the composer's grandson, is quoted as having remarked that Klemperer had shown him "for the first time how Wagner could sound." Certain passages in the new recording are likely to arouse a similar reaction from those with no such ties to Bayreuth. The list of excerpts contained in the album is thrice-familiar, almost painfully so. But in meeting this orthodox list on its own grounds, the listener can find interpretative value in all of the performances. The Philharmonia Orchestra, as a responsive and seasoned body of players, ably reflects the will of its director.

For music-lovers brought up on the Wagner of Toscanini, the Klemperer performances will require some getting used to. Instead of the passionate directness identified with the Italian maestro, these newly recorded excerpts bear a sense of spaciousness completely Central European; but while they vault, they never dawdle. There is not a stolid moment in them, although the "Rienzi" could be more brilliant, the "Flying Dutchman" more fiery. For full realization of the music, Klemperer comes into his own with the "Tannhäuser" overture. (Not in our generation has this overplayed piece sounded so fascinating, nor has it evoked such a double-layered sense of sonority: the oak-like pilgrims' chant, and the eerie whispers of the Venusberg, which seem to come hissing from inner space. Just as the existence of harmony often seems a result of the interacting lines of counterpoint rather than a reality in itself, so does the orchestral color achieved by this conductor appear as a fusion of structural forces within the music rather than any conscious effort at the use of tints. Klemperer, in his approach, is an architect rather than a painter. Fortunately this maestro--always flexible--does not disdain musical liberties that grow out of the dramatic design, such as his superb acceleration of the Venusberg theme as the bacchanale reaches its climax.

Probably no one, not even Klemperer, can make the first-act prelude to "Lohengrin" absorbing to the modern listener. He conducts this amorphous A major maze with gravity and poise, but falls short of stirring up musical vitality where it barely exists. The prelude to Act III is another matter (controversial in taste, but never dull), and the conductor brings to its second theme--so often sentimentalized--a charming, perceptive lilt that does much to shape a winning performance.

All of the excerpts from Wagner's later scores are marvelously well done. The opening tempo of the "Meistersinger" prelude is perfection, establishing a boldness of line that holds throughout and, with its deliberate tread, heightens the humor of the famous woodwind parody on the main theme. As for the Dance of the Apprentices, when has it been taken at so beguiling a pace, with such neatly articulated staccati? In an entirely different way, the prelude to "Tristan und Isolde" strikes fire. Such voluptuous ebb and flow, so massive a climax have not previously come this listener's way. And in Siegfried's Funeral March, conductor and orchestra evoke the stormy grandeur of Wagner's "Ring" without pomposity.

The technical aspects of this recording are on the same lofty plane as the musical direction, but there are a few debatable balances that should perhaps be mentioned. In the sensuous coda of the "Dutchman" overture, the pulsating harp rhythms go almost unheard. The prelude to "Meistersinger" suffers, when all four themes sound in combination, from exaggerated "miking" of tuba and double basses. At the start of Isolde's Love-Death, the important bass clarinet solo is covered by inner voices. These blemishes (and there are a few others) reach an insignificant total when weighed against the distinction of the album as a whole.