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Lohengrin


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Picked up for $1 the other day a vintage 5-LP set of this 1953 live London recording from Bayreuth:

Conductor Joseph Keilberth

König Heinrich Josef Greindl
Lohengrin Wolfgang Windgassen
Elsa Eleanor Steber
Telramund Hermann Uhde
Ortrud Astrid Varnay
Der Heerrufer Hans Braun
Ein Edle Gerhard Stolze
Ein Edle Josef Janko
Ein Edle Alfons Herwig
Ein Edle Theo Adam

Chor und Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele

Recorded July/August, 1953

Put it on to check it out and was just transfixed -- by the opera (the plot and the music; is there some forecasting of "Parsifal" here in both the latter and former?), the performance (everyone so far is good to great, especially the terrifying Varnay, the angelic Steber, the tormented Uhde, and the William Pitz-led chorus; Windgassen is right there emotionally, though perhaps no one in the post-war era had all that the more or less crazy role calls for). I've had for years on LP the much vaunted EMI Kempe set, which I haven't listened to in a long time and which never gripped me as this recording has. Perhaps because we're there at Bayreuth (this was Weiland Wagner's first production there), this seems less like a performance than a series of direct urgent human (plus a swan) confrontations. Part of the pleasure BTW comes from those 10 shortish LP sides. You take in a chunk that somehow seems just right, then you get up and put on the next one.

 

Right -- Lohengrin is Parsifal's son, but I was also thinking of the frequently diaphanous music.

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