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Musical Courier 1928-08-09: Vol 97 Iss 6, 1928
78 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Bayreuth Festival Opens Auspiciously with Fine Performance of Tristan
3Same Repertoire as Last Year—No Additional New Scenery Until 1930—Larsen-Todsen an Impressive Isolde—Parsifal With Muck
5BAYREUTH.—This year's Bayreuth Festspiele opened with the usual éclat on July 19. The first production was Tristan und Isolde, played to a fully sold-out house of pilgrims, a little more cosmopolitan, perhaps, than at any time since the war, but also a little more "touriste": the true Wagner worshippers both inside and outside of Germany are growing scarcer; the mere sight-seers, trippers, mustn't-miss-it kind of visitors more numerous, as the middle class becomes more prosperous and more travelled. America is well represented; the man from Cook's would hardly be out of place on the once hallowed Festival Hill.
7Musically the production lay in the same competent and racially "qualified" hands. Karl Elmendorf, a "discovery" of Siegfried Wagner's so far as Bayreuth is concerned, has made some progress in the handling of his material in an essentially chaste and calm manner.
9The personnel however, showed a tremendous improvement. Siegfried Wagner is in complete and sole command. It is his ideals of the perpetuation and the development of the Wagnerian idea that counts in Bayreuth today. Siegfried Wagner, despite his numerous compositions, is more scenic artist than musician—an architect, a creator of panoramas, and of tableaux vivants. The drama, the scene, in short, the play's the thing; the music, as Richard Wagner thought it should be, is subservient to the action, the gesture and the word. The world has decreed otherwise; it has deified Wagner the musician, and it smiles indulgently at Wagner the dramatic poet and the stage philosopher with his illusionist Victorianism. It is true that illusion is still better maintained in Bayreuth than anywhere, the credibility of what happens behind the footlights and the credulosity of those before them are both a sort of special culture here.
11Nowhere but in Bayreuth do we get such a complete unity of gesture and musical phrase. The gesture in the Wagnerian drama precedes rather than synchronizes with the word; and Siegfried Wagner, unique as a Wagnerian manager, shows the singer not only what to do but when to do it. This eliminates much of the cheap staginess, much of the busy but futile armwork of the average Wagnerian "hero" or "heroine." The miming on the Bayreuth stage is economical, apposite, and impressive because apt.
13TRISTAN
15Nanny Larsen-Todsen, well known to Metropolitan audiences, is the Isolde of the year, and her impersonation is not only deeply impressive and moving but spiritualized in all its nuances and details. The influence of Bayreuth in her interpretations was obvious and amounts to a complete reform. Gunnar Graarud, of Hamburg, who was to have sung the first Tristan last year, took the rôle and established himself firmly as one of Bayreuth's new young men. Though vocally not comparable to the best Tristan he made up for this deficiency by the intensity of his expression and the genuineness of his emotion.
17The Kurwenal, too, was new to Bayreuth—Rudolf Bockelmann, likewise of Hamburg, whose bluff, rough and ready conception of the part was hardly an improvement on the more mature figure of Eduard Habich last year. The King Marke of Ludwig Hofmann, of Berlin, was distinguished both by vocal beauty and nobility of deportment. An unusually beautiful voice was that of the Steersman, Franz Meyer, who made rather too much of a "feature" of his song.
19"OPERATIC" TOUCHES
21This, moreover, was not the only "operatic" touch of the performance; and surely Richard Wagner would turn in his grave could he see his own offspring appear before the curtain and bow.
23The second evening, July 20, was devoted to Parsifal. Bayreuth is doing its best, within its own private means, to adapt the productions to the modern, post-war standards of stage technic. It has gone a long way since the war, by remodelling its stage and improving its mechanism; gradually the various scenic outfits are being renewed.
25Tristan is new; Parsifal was to be new this year but its completion has had to be postponed till the next Festival, in 1930. However, there is a new Klingsor's garden, and a few minor improvements in the Good Friday Meadow. For the rest the scenery is largely that which served for the world première in 1882, and upon which Wagner himself feasted his eyes.
27MUCK CONDUCTS PARSIFAL
29Parsifal, like last year, is being conducted by Karl Muck, the sixty-nine-year-old veteran who represents the one direct contact with the true Wagner tradition. Under him the Bayreuth orchestra attains its own peculiar sound, that inimitably rich and glowing sound which Wagner must have heard in his imaginative ear. Who never heard Muck conduct Wagner, never heard Wagner at its best.
31Outstanding among the singers is Inar Andresen, the Swede, who was the sensation of last year. Vocally he is the finest Gurnemanz heard in Bayreuth for years. Gotthelf Pistor, another debutant of last year, is the Parsifal—a sympathetic figure and a good voice. He has grown more reliable since last year. The rôle of Amfortas has been given back to Theodor Scheidl, one of the old reliables, but the Klingsor was a newcomer, Odo Boeck, who has not yet quite found his Bayreuth legs. Frida Leider takes the place of Barbara Kemp as Kundry, and is vocally superb, though perhaps less demoniacal and less a complete incarnation of the character than Kemp, whose flair for the weird and the eerie is unique. The Flower Maidens, trained by that implacable drillmaster, Hugo Rüdel, were all satisfactory.
33WONDERFUL CHORUS
35Rüdel, of course, was also responsible for the wonderful chorus which, besides being a marvel of tonal beauty, never swerved a hair's breadth from the pitch—a miracle almost as great as the illumination of the Grail. The Bayreuth orchestra, again an aggregation of crack players from all over Germany, and rehearsed for weeks or even months in advance, is again a unique source of joy to the Wagnerian and the musician and the tonal sensualist. It is "all there."
37The next and final task to be tackled is The Ring. Then there will be repetitions—three each of Tristan and of Parsifal, two of The Ring. Parsifal on August 19 ends a festival which, except for few details and the personnel, is a repetition of last year.
39C. S.
41Wagner to be Movietoned
43Wagner is to be movietoned—if that is a verb, which it probably is not for it is certainly not yet in Webster's. However, music lovers, and particularly Wagner lovers, will know what it means, and it will mean joy to many who have longed and longed these many years to hear and see Wagner but have never had the opportunity. The opportunity is now being made for them by George Blumenthal, general manager of the German Grand Opera Company. The Wagner operas will be filmed in colors by this company by the new process, the Sound Film.
45This means, as most people will instantly realize, that people all over the world will now be able to see the Wagner operas as they are seen by audiences at Bayreuth and elsewhere, to hear them played by a great symphony orchestra and sung by leading singers, and to have the full benefit of the scenery and costumes all in their original colors. The company is coming direct from Berlin in the fall and will begin a tour of America in January. The Movietones will be made before the tour and will be ready for release to the general public immediately after the tour.
47Molinari Debuts at Stadium
49Italian Conductor Scores Success as Outdoor Leader—Applauds Orchestra After Brahms Symphony.
51Last Thursday evening, August 2, Bernardino Molinari came to the Stadium as the third of the guest conductors of the Summer, and scored a decided success in the second symphony of Brahms, Wagner's Tannhäuser overture, and Respighi's Pines of Rome.
53The Italian conductor is no stranger to New York, for he visited this city last winter to lead several concerts of the Philharmonic Orchestra; nor was his warm reception last Thursday a novelty to him here, for his former appearances before our public likewise resulted in the extending of enthusiastic ovations to the gifted conductor from Rome.
55Last winter, critical opinion in this town regarding Molinari concurred with the estimates of the auditors. He was generally declared to be a thorough musician of sensitized emotion and sound scholarship, with a keen sense of orchestral coloring and complete control of the technic of the baton.
57At the Stadium with its far reaches of space, Molinari seemed, furthermore, to take on an added touch of personal picturesqueness. His tall, slim figure marked itself readily to the eye of even the distant auditors, and his sweep of arms, and gyrations of body emphasized the response which he gave to his players and the music. Physical personality plays an important rôle in the impression created by a leader outdoors, where intimate contact between him and his hearers is necessarily more difficult to establish than in a closed auditorium.
59Molinari made the Brahms symphony, a particularly "intimate" work, deliver its serious and sober message with convincing effect. There was a humid stillness of air during the performance and none of its delicate shadings were dissipated, as so often is the case when the wind blows even slightly at the Stadium. Following the symphony, and before he heeded the applause meant for himself, Molinari turned to the orchestra and applauded his players enthusiastically.
61An eloquent and compelling reading of the Wagner overture resulted in even more plaudits for the visitor, which were intensified after the exciting finale of The Pines of Rome, the work first made memorable here by Toscanini. In the Molinari interpretation, all the pictorial atmosphere, poesy, and dramatic significances of the composition, came to intriguing exposition.
63An audience of about 8,000 greeted Molinari's debut. He was introduced to the gathering by Adolph Lewisohn, (sponsor of the Stadium series) and Emanuele Grassi, Italian Consul General at New York.
65MONDAY, JULY 30
67Albert Coates made his fifth appearance as guest conductor of the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra at the Stadium on Monday evening of last week and held the rapt attention of the huge audience with his masterly reading of the Brahms first symphony. The program contained only two numbers, the Brahms and the second act of Faust, given in concert form and sung in English by five sterling artists. Four of them, Natalie Hall (Marguerite), Helen Oelheim (Martha), Harold Hanson (Siebel), and George Fleming Houston (Mephisto) were heard last winter as members of the American Opera Company. The fifth, Robert Elwyn, is a young artist sponsored by the National Music League, and he displayed decided interpretative ability and a voice of beautiful quality. His performance was marked not only by technical skill but also by a sympathy and tenderness which lent a rare and poignant charm to his singing of the exquisite love music of this act of Faust.
69TUESDAY, JULY 31
71Mr. Coates again conducted on Tuesday evening, choosing for his program works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Tschaikowsky, Scriabine, Glinka and Beethoven. The Stadium was crowded on this evening, and the prolonged applause which followed each number was justified by the work of both conductor and orchestra. The Fifth Symphony of Beethoven, the concluding offering, was especially well played.
73WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1
75The final note of the Tschaikowsky Fourth at the Wednesday evening concert struck Albert Coates' farewell for the current Stadium season, and it was with reluctance that many of the concert's patrons saw him go. The firm surety of his work and the vitality with which he vested his interpretations—besides the agreeable programs which he offered—should be recommendation enough to bring him back again. The same spirit of good will toward Coates
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