Bayreuth Festival

In 2006/07 Testament released for the first time ever (on 14 CDs – SBT141412) the legendary stereo recordings made by Decca at Bayreuth of the first cycle of the 1955 performances of the Ring, conducted by Joseph Keilberth and staged by the Festival’s co-director, the radical regisseur Wieland Wagner. Partly for security, partly out of interest, Decca’s engineers under Peter Andry also recorded the second cycle, from which this first-ever release of Götterdämmerung is drawn, providing a chance to appreciate the depth of New Bayreuth’s casting resources. For these performances Martha Mödl took over as Brünnhilde (she and Astrid Varnay regularly alternated in the Festival cycles between 1953 and 1956) while Hans Hotter, the production’s Wotan/Wanderer from 1952, took on the role of Gunther, one of the other Ring roles which (along with a rare Hunding in New York at the strange behest of Rudolf Bing) he occasionally undertook. The reason for Hotter’s appearance as the Gibichung leader appears to have been to allow Hermann Uhde, the production’s regular Gunther, to settle into the new production of Der fliegende Holländer (available on Testament SBT21384) opening that year – although Hotter himself also sang the Dutchman that year. Martha Mödl (1912-2001) was one of the new, yet highly experienced, generation of singers that Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner were so keen to bring to their new take on post-war Bayreuth. By 1950 she was singing Kundry in Berlin for Joseph Keilberth and for Wilhelm Furtwängler at La Scala. Both conductors took her up in a big way (Furtwängler recorded Fidelio, the complete Ring for Rome Radio and his EMI studio Walküre with her) and recommended her to Bayreuth where she sang from 1951-60, in 1962 and from 1965-67. She was the first Kundry in Wieland’s new Parsifal under Knappertsbusch (1951-60); the first Isolde in his first Tristan under Karajan; a mainstay of his first Ring as Brünnhilde, once Sieglinde (which she regarded as a mistake), Gutrune and even the Third Norn; Waltraute in his second Ring from 1965-67 (“you know”, Wieland told her on his sick bed, “it’s like a little Brünnhilde, and that’s how I want you to play it”); and took over Isolde from Birgit Nilsson (the singer that Mödl’s mother had once heard and told her daughter “that’s a real rival for all of you!”) at the final performance of the first run of Wieland’s second Tristan.

Extract from the note Mike Ashman, 2008

The 1968 Bayreuth Festival opened with a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg that seemed to be heading for disaster when the central role of Hans Sachs had to be recast after the final dress rehearsal. But Theo Adam struck gold in the scene in his workshop in Act Three and later on the Festival Meadow, dispelling all possible misgivings. In Wolfgang Wagner's first Bayreuth production of his grandfather's only mature comedy,Adam created a multifaceted portrait of the cobbler-poet using all the resources of his striking bass-baritone voice, a voice that was penetrating in all its registers, yet also capable of great subtlety. In the covered pit, Karl Böhm brought out the lyric colours and fleeter moments in the score, allowing the other singers, too, to shine with their young and unspoilt voices.Waldemar Kmentt, for example, had largely been known as a Mozart tenor until then, but as the young knight Walther von Stolzing, his lean tone and ease of emission set the highest standards in casting this role.The pedantic town clerk is sung by the English baritone Thomas Hemsley with clear diction and an unusually lyrical baritonal colour, while many of the remaining Masters include eminent names such as Günther Treptow, Sebastian Feiersinger and William Johns, representing three generations of 'heavy' heldentenor voices. No less worthy of mention are two of the foremost German basses of the 20th century: Karl Ridderbusch, already auditioning for the part of Hans Sachs in his delivery of Pogner's testing address, and Kurt Moll as the Night Watchman - proof of the fact that in Bayreuth this secondary role has long been cast with an eye to the future.The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra , as so often on magnificent form, and the Festival's fully committed chorus contribute to the rounded impression left by this live recording from 1968.