Wagner: Parsifal: Transformation Scene (Verwandlungsmusik, Geleiten wir im bergenden Schrei)

‘It’s Wagner’s opera: let’s present him and not ourselves!’ This remark by Hans Knappertsbusch to Hans Hotter as the singer was about go on stage as Gurnemanz at Bayreuth in 1964 was characteristic of the conductor’s attitude. Singers’ egos, directors’ concepts and designers’ flights of fancy had no place in the Knappertsbusch vision of Wagner’s stage works. Indeed, after his second season at ‘New Bayreuth’, he told Wieland Wagner: ‘As soon as the spirit of Richard Wagner moves back into the Festspielhaus, I shall be the first to return’. And yet it would be hard to find a more flexible and spontaneous exponent of the conductor’s art than Hans Knappertsbusch, or ‘Kna’ as his friends and colleagues called him. No two of his performances were alike, which made him a difficult conductor to ‘capture’ in the clinical environment of the recording studio. He was notoriously averse to rehearsals, preferring to take inspiration from the moment when everything came together in the crucible of a live performance in the theatre or concert hall. Frequently the result was magnificent as this collection is testament to.

This collection brings together the bulk of his Wagner orchestral recordings for Decca (with the Wiener Philharmoniker), with scenes from Parsifal with members of the Wiener Staatsopernchor and the ‘Forest Murmurs’ from Siegfried with Franz Lechleitner in the title role – in all, more than two-and-a-half hours of music recorded for Decca between 1950 and 1959. Australian Wagner scholar Peter Bassett contributes the illuminating notes for this release.

Knappertsbusch died in October 1965 in Munich, following a fall at his home. In a long musical life, he explored the works of the great classical composers with intelligence and imagination; but, as he himself said, it was to Wagner’s music dramas that he devoted ‘his most and his deepest’.

With Richard Wagner's bicentenary coming up on May 22, there are all kinds of sounds in the air and words to be read about the great Romantic music dramatist. But where among all this Wagneriana are we to find the truly original messages? Some of them are to be encountered right here, because when GERMAN BRASS tackles Wagner, expectations are always high. The brass ensemble is justly regarded as one of the world's finest, consisting of the best musicians from Germany's leading orchestras (including Bayreuth's!), so this is a special event, music made, played and recorded with total commitment.We still come back to the question: Wagner for brass – how is that going to sound? It seems a bold idea at first sight, but as soon as you hear it, it turns out to be a stroke of genius: Wagner was no stranger to fullbodied brass sound, and the musicians of GERMAN BRASS succeed brilliantly in coaxing the complex timbres of Wagner's mixed sounds from their instruments. This is due as much to their virtuosity as to the creative arrangements of their artistic director Matthias Höfs. The verve of the "Ride of the Valkyries" will astound the listener as much as the alternating blocks of sound at the start of the "Pilgrims' Chorus" from Tannhäuser, where original and arrangement seem to keep changing places. Familiar passages come over as well known and yet subtly different – a stimulating experience!

Early recordings of favourite Wagner orchestral selections still possess a special mystique. Five conducting giants, all born within 20 years of Wagner's death and all of whom made notable appearances at the Bayreuth Festival, are represented in this collection. Especially notable is the comparison between Hans Knappertsbusch's youthful exuberance for Polydor in 1927-28 and his final moving studio documents (on the Westminster label, in stereo) of 1962. Also featured: Furtwängler, de Sabata, Elmendorff and Jochum.