To start this long journey, I choose a long epic of a piece, well actually four pieces. I started with Wagner's Epic, The Ring of Nibelung. This 1950 live recording from La SCALA in Milan was conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler. The entire cycle is played out on 11 different records, the first being, from what I gathered, the first and second act of Rheingold.
I'm not a big opera fan, but I choose this as my starting piece since like this project, it's large, complex and rarely completed.
Since my German language skills have more or less vanished in the 4 years since I was last in Germany, I couldn't tell you what the story line is. Wagner's accompaniment, though, is everything that would be expected from Wagner; gripping, loud, brash and almost never subtle. The overture starts with a layer of strings and horns, building with string runs and arpeggios, up and down, over and over again. From this very beginning you know the epic is coming. It took me a while to tune into the vocals, mainly due to lo-fi recording and due to it being recorded live (I made some adjustments to my turntable which made a world of difference on side two). The one thing that stood out was how often I felt like was was watching a Loony Tunes show, which makes sense, Wagner and other classical pieces are all over those episodes. By the end of the second side, I was hooked, the tempo was building, the strings became rhythmic as the horns modulated through chords; baritones and tenors took the lead as the sopranos took a back seat. And then, it was done; the end of the second side. I jumped up with a start, craving more, craving a resolution of some kind, only to need to wait for tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment