Testament issues the first-ever stereo recording of The Ring Cycle

with Hans Hotter, Astrid Varnay and Wolfgang Windgassen

 

In January 2006 Testament will release a new Siegfried, the first instalment of a 'lost' Ring recorded at the Bayreuth Festival in 1955. Thrillingly conducted by Joseph Keilberth (called by Astrid Varnay "a conductor with so much love, who was always there for you"), the cycle provides the opportunity to hear complete for the first time on commercial release the definitive performances of Hans Hotter (Wotan/Wanderer), Astrid Varnay (Brünnhilde), Ramon Vinay (Siegmund), Josef Greindl (Hagen) and Paul Kuen (Mime), in addition to the much-loved Siegfried of Wolfgang Windgassen, here heard in his prime.

These 'live' Bayreuth performances were taped by a Decca team led by Peter Andry and including the noted engineers Kenneth Wilkinson and Roy Wallace, with Gordon Parry as assistant. Using a new six-channel mixer designed by Wallace, the team made both stereo and mono recordings of each opera. Three microphones were placed in the sunken orchestra pit and three hung from a lighting bridge about 20 feet above the stage. "This was brilliant; it worked beautifully", remembers Wallace. The company prepared for an expected release, but John Culshaw, recently returned to Decca, vetoed the project. He disliked 'live' recordings and already had plans for a studio Ring with Solti which began four years later.

Decca's recording vividly captures in wonderful stereo sound the unique acoustic and stage/pit balance of the Bayreuth Festival theatre with its sunken orchestra, in addition to preserving the leading singers from a Wagnerian golden age in 'live' performance.

 

This Siegfried has been slumbering longer than Brünnhilde on her Valkyrie rock. Recorded live at the 1955 Bayreuth festival, it should have been the first commercial release of Wagner’s magnum opus, but record-company politics — detailed in Mike Ashman’s booklet essay — left it languishing on the shelves for more than 50 years. Now it is out of copyright and all the principal participants, except Astrid Varnay’s thrilling Brünnhilde, are dead, Testament can issue it legitimately. The revelations are the remarkable early stereo sound quality and Keilberth’s elemental conducting. This Siegfried has an inexorable sweep that will take your breath away. The singing, too, is of a kind you just don’t hear today. Windgassen and Hotter are both in fresher voice than when they recorded this opera in the studio, and the supporting cast — Paul Küen’s properly sung yet malevolent Mime, Gustav Neidlinger’s baleful Alberich, Maria von Ilosvay’s gravely beautiful Erda — are vintage Bayreuth. The classical-record event of the year.

Five stars, Times

 

Testament 4cds SBT41392