Bartók Duke Bluebeard's Castle
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Béla Bartók
Genre:
Opera
Label: Decca
Magazine Review Date: 1/1989
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 60
Mastering:
ADD
Catalogue Number: 414 167-2DH
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Duke Bluebeard's Castle |
Béla Bartók, Composer
Béla Bartók, Composer Christa Ludwig, Judith, Mezzo soprano István Kertész, Conductor London Symphony Orchestra Walter Berry, Duke Bluebeard, Baritone |
Author: Michael Oliver
We are still waiting for an ideal Bluebeard's Castle to appear on CD, but this one has fewer drawbacks than most. Ludwig is a mezzo Judith of course, but she is on her guard against allowing the colour of her voice to soften the character (a pity that, like most Judiths, she holds the high C at the opening of the fifth door: she should not exultantly greet the majestic vista opening before her but be struck dumb by it). Berry is a splendid Bluebeard (listen just to the way he colours the repetitions of ''Are you afraid?'', first anxiously solicitous, then himself afraid of the consequences if Judith were to feel fear) and the interplay between the two is finely conveyed. Only an unaccountably hurried reading of the 'sea of tears' episode (the sixth door) and a certain slackening of tension in the final scene let down Kertesz's otherwise vividly dramatic direction, and the recording still sounds very well. The steep dynamic range of more recent accounts is lacking, of course, but the balance between voices and orchestra is exemplary and there is an excellent sense of space.
Fischer's version on CBS will be preferred by some for its soprano Judith, Eva Marton (shrill at times but eloquent) and for his surer choice of tempo in the second half of the opera: the fifth door majestically slow, the sixth almost motionless, the final scene a noble culmination; Fischer's Bluebeard, Samuel Ramey, is admirable but responds to the words in a more generalized way than Berry. Sawallisch on DG paces the work almost as finely as Fischer, with rather more dramatic point, and he has perhaps the best orchestral playing of the lot, but both his soloists (Julia Varady and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) over-act melodramatically. They are nowhere near as melodramatic, mind you, as Elena Obraztsova in Ferencsik's version (on Hungaroton/Conifer): her assertive, nagging shrewishness makes one impatient for Evgeny Nesterenko's sonorous Bluebeard to open the seventh door and lock her behind it.
As I say, there is no idealBluebeard's Castle yet, but Kertesz would have joined Fischer at the head of the present field had Decca not spoiled their ship for a ha'porth of tar: what is the point in getting two fine artists to record this work in carefully enunciated Hungarian and then to supply no text at all? While I am on the subject, all the other versions provide Christopher Hassall's familiar but inevitable very free singing translation. It is high time that someone commissioned a new and accurate line-by-line version, I suspect that Bela Balesz was a better poet than Hassall's jog-trot sub-Longfellow makes him seem (and on CD there could surely be room for his spoken prologue).'
Fischer's version on CBS will be preferred by some for its soprano Judith, Eva Marton (shrill at times but eloquent) and for his surer choice of tempo in the second half of the opera: the fifth door majestically slow, the sixth almost motionless, the final scene a noble culmination; Fischer's Bluebeard, Samuel Ramey, is admirable but responds to the words in a more generalized way than Berry. Sawallisch on DG paces the work almost as finely as Fischer, with rather more dramatic point, and he has perhaps the best orchestral playing of the lot, but both his soloists (Julia Varady and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) over-act melodramatically. They are nowhere near as melodramatic, mind you, as Elena Obraztsova in Ferencsik's version (on Hungaroton/Conifer): her assertive, nagging shrewishness makes one impatient for Evgeny Nesterenko's sonorous Bluebeard to open the seventh door and lock her behind it.
As I say, there is no ideal
Bartók Duke Bluebeard's Castle
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