Wagner: Die Meistersinqer von Nurnberg.(Sound Recording Review)

Della Casa, Malaniuk; Hopf, Unger, Edelmann, Planzl, Bohme, Faulhaber; Bayreuth Festspiele, Knappertsbusch. 1952. No notes or libretto. Archipel ARPCD 0111-4 (Qualiton, dist.)

In the summer of 1951, when the Bayreuth Festival reopened for the first time after World War II, EMI's Walter Legge produced a commercial recording of the season's Meistersinger. That set, conducted by Herbert yon Karajan, with Otto Edelmann as Hans Sachs and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as Eva, has long been a classic. The present release represents Bayreuth a year later. Lisa Della Casa had replaced Schwarzkopf, but the remaining members of the Act III quintet were the same, and four of the minor Meistersingers repeated their roles from the previous year.

This time around, however, Hans Knappertsbusch was on the podium, and there are enormous differences between the two conductors. Surprisingly, Knappertsbusch's tempos are often brisker than Karajan's--notably in the quintet--but the older conductor is more flexible, allowing the singers expressive leeway so that the music breathes more naturally, and gives a sense of being more expansive regardless of actual speed. Knappertsbusch's Act III Prelude becomes a miniature tone poem, and his sense of the relationships between one tempo and another throughout the opera is uncanny.

Pivotal in the excellent cast is Edelmann's warm, fatherly Sachs. Not a subtle interpreter, he delivers his lines in a straightforward way, but he sings superbly. Nothing is strained or forced. He scales high-lying passages with ease and makes everything sound natural, right and ultimately comforting. Sachs's dosing monologue, with its nationalistic pronouncements, ...