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Review: MusicWebInternational

Richard Wagner
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
1. Prelude

Die Walküre Act 1
Scene 1
2. Prelude
3. Wess’ Herd dies auch sei
Scene 2
4. Müd am Herd fand ich den Mann
5. Friedmund darf ich nicht heissen
6. Ich weiss ein wildes Geschlecht
Scene 3
7. Ein Schwert verhiess mir der Vater
8. Schläfst du, Gast
9. Der Männer Sippe sass hier im Saal
10. Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond
11. Du bist der Lenz
12. War Wälse dein Vater
13. Siegmund heiss ich und Siegmund bin ich!
(Live broadcast March 31, 1960)

César Franck
Symphony in D minor (1888)
1. I. Lento
2. II. Allegretto
3. III. Allegro non troppo

Franz Liszt
4. Piano Concerto No. 2 in A, S125
(Live broadcast February 24, 1963)

Walter Schrøder
5. Piazza del Popolo
(Live broadcast November 20, 1958)

Lauritz Melchior ©
CD 1 of this collection is dedicated to the concert held in honour of the legendary Danish tenor Lauritz Melchior, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. At that time, Melchior could look back on a long and glorious career which had begun in earnest at the age of 18 in 1908, with his first operatic vocal studies under Paul Bang at the Royal Opera School in Copenhagen.
At that stage, Melchior was a baritone, who made his debut on the stage of the Royal Theatre in 1913, as Silvio in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. It took a distinguished visiting guest, the American mezzo Mme Charles Cahier, to tell Melchior that he was not a baritone but a tenor ‘with the lid on’. He took note, retrained with the Danish tenor Vilhelm Herold, and made a second debut in 1918, this time in the title role of Wagner’s Tannhäuser. He had, it was clear, found his metier.
Word of his talent reached Cosima and Siegfried Wagner, who invited him in 1924 to Bayreuth, where he sang both Siegmund and Parsifal. Two years later he sang Tannhäuser once more for his debut at the Met, where he found a new home, and an adoring public. Melchior went on to make 519 appearances on the Met stage in Wagner roles, over the course of a quarter of a century. The Danish public held him in their hearts even if his appearances before them were few and far between, much as Birgit Nilsson became an icon in Sweden and stayed that way long after she had left for more glamorous stages abroad.
Thus it was that this 70th-birthday concert (11 days after the celebration itself) took on emotional signifificance for all concerned. It begins with a beautifully shaped account of the Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: a curtain-raiser to a complete performance of the First Act from Die Walküre which brieflfly surfaced on LP, more than 50 years ago, on the pirate “EJS Smith” label. Danish radio listeners rarely had the opportunity to enjoy live Wagner at any length, let alone with a cast as notable as the one assembled here. Partnering Melchior were Dorothy Larsen (as Sieglinde) and Mogens Wedel (as Hunding), both of them stalwart members of the Royal Theatre.
Larsen (1911-1990) had a considerable Wagnerian pedigree of her own; though born in Chicago to Danish parents, she made her debut on the stage of the Royal Theater in Copenhagen as a 26-year-old Fricka (Die Walküre), in 1937, and she went on to sing Elsa in Lohengrin and Eva in Die Meistersinger, moving up in vocal range like Melchior. In 1948 she became a Kammersänger at the Royal Theater, until the end of the season following this broadcast in 1960.
Meanwhile Wedel (1915-1990) had serious Wagnerian experience of his own, in roles such as Daland (Die flfliegende Holländer), King Marke (Tristan und Isolde) and Gurnemanz (Parsifal). Having trained at the conservatoire in Copenhagen, he made his name abroad, in Germany and Switzerland. In 1955 he too became a Kammersänger at the Royal Theater, until his retirement from the stage in 1971. Wedel moved to his childhood holiday town of Kerteminde, where he became a church singer at Agedrup Church on East Funen and worked as a teacher of speech and singing at evening colleges in Odense and Vejle.
As for the star of the show: Melchior proves to be in fine voice from his first entrance, surely aided by the lively pace and fiercely dramatic profile of Jensen’s conducting. At this stage of his career he is inclined to phrase in shorter lines: the celebrated double cry of ‘Walse!’ is still protracted, but softened from of old, and surrounded by lines delivered in recitative style rather than sustained in the long paragraphs of tireless lyricism that once sent Met audiences into raptures. It is, all the same, an impressive achievement.

RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 2024

CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 933

EAN: 5709499933008

Product Type

CD, MP3, FLAC