These performances, which took place within two years of each other in wartime Germany, rank high in the work’s discography. If Wagner readings today had half the tension and tautness evinced by Richard Kraus, an underrated conductor, and the great Clemens Krauss, they would benefit enormously. From start to finish both positively grip the music and convey all the astounding originality of the score. Krauss in particular lets us feel the sea coursing through the work. As William Mann put it in Opera on Record (Hutchinson: 1979), he “cares for pulse, balance and phrasing and for the precision and attack of the cast, including the chorus”. He had honed his Munich forces to the highest degree of execution. In a less immediate sound-picture, Kraus seems to be doing almost as well at Bayreuth.
As for the singers, if only the best in each version could have come together we would have had the performance of a lifetime. Hotter’s Dutchman, at Munich, remains unsurpassed in conveying the haunted quality of that suffering soul, and in 1944 he was at the peak of his powers, pouring out a rich, firm tone unstintingly. It is a towering interpretation that Berglund, good as he is, cannot match in vocal confidence or verbal acuity, although he improves greatly when confronted by his Senta, in which role Muller at Bayreuth outsings and outperforms Ursuleac. Both were nearing the end of distinguished careers in the theatre. Each sings with an intelligence and intensity that stir the soul, but Muller’s voice is the better preserved and therefore firmer.
Volker, also towards the close of his career, is not as effortless in his vocalization as he once was, yet he remains a fine Wagnerian tenor. Ostertag is too choppy in his phrasing. Hann is an even more characterful Daland than Hofmann. The Steuermann on both sets is good. The Munich chorus are vastly superior to their counterparts in wartime Bayreuth.
Although the Bayreuth recording is more occluded than the Munich, it does not suffer from the distortion that has always afflicted the latter in its various guises. Hotter is the least affected, happily so, since his unsurpassed interpretation is the best reason for acquiring the Munich set. The useful bonuses included with the Bayreuth version are the performances of Sachs’s monologues by respectively Hofmann and Berglund. Hofmann’s Act 2 solo matches Schorr’s 1930 version (EMI, 1/92) in its beauty of tone and inward feeling, and is well worth hearing – the original 78 is a great rarity. Berglund’s account of “Wahn” is not so special. As ever, no information on either performance is provided by Preiser.R1 '9606114'