Customer Reviews

Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle / Kertész, Ludwig, Berry

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As does Walter Berry and Christa Ludwig. This is an emotionally wrenching opera, and the forces gathered here triumph with it. I will not join the debate over whether singers who are born to Hungarian should be the only kind allowed to touch this opera... Oh well, I lied.... Here we go. I do not know Hungarian well enough to know if Berry and Ludwig are idiomatic. Kertesz, I assume, is idiomatic in his conducting. After all, if I remember correctly, he and Bartok are countrymen. What counts to me is this- do the cast members wrench my heart out of my chest, wring it dry, then throw it back at me and say, "Here! Heal yourself, fool, if you can!"? This cast does. As almost anyone reading this knows, Ludwig and Berry were husband and wife at the time this was recorded, and they have that special rapport two people who know each other well should have.

Ludwig is shrewish and excruciatingly importunate as the nosy Judith. There is a sexual and sensual tension that hangs in the air in this atmospheric recording that is almost palpable. I almost feel the dank moisture of Bluebeard's Castle and can easily see the shadowy depths in my mind's eye. When the light breaks in at the 5th door, I can feel the luxuriance of Bluebeard's vast estate, his immense pride for his hard-won holdings and his tender, desperate love for his latest wife. All it seems to be to Judith is a goad to her curiosity and a reminder that this man is more than she can even begin to comprehend. Kertesz, in the liner notes, states plainly that Judith is the villain in this opus, and I have to agree. Christa Ludwig catches this woman's character. By turns, she is concerned, `loving', frightened, angry, curous... well, you name it..., while not once noticing her man's feelings and his desperation.

Walter Berry feels it, however, and he displays it for all the world to see. If this wife fails him, he is doomed to live in dark splendor, lonely from then unto the farthest reaches of Eternity. To those who are only familiar with the fairy tail, this is a different Bluebeard, though his reputation within the opera is just as bloody. It is rumored that Bluebeard is basically Bartok himself. While I cannot personally vouch for the truth of that assertion as far as Bela Bartok is concerned, I know how lonely being an artist can be. Everyone wants to know your secrets, (Naturally, I do not decry this, but much of the curiosity is morbid, as though the artist was a specimen being studied and dissected.) and curiosity of that kind can be destructive to the Self. Anyway, Kertesz imprints that basic theme deeply into the fabric of this performance.

As for the voices- Walter Berry had the requisite power and emotional weight to carry this role, and he has the best voice, for sheer voice, I've heard in the more recent recordings. (For my money, the greatest Bluebeard I've ever heard is Jerome Hines, in an old recording with Rosalind Elias as Judith and Eugene Ormandy conducting. Purists are warned, however- the Hines recording is in English.) As for Christa Ludwig- she had a spectacular voice, always in the service of the character. She's my favorite Judith, with Rosalind Elias coming up really close. What a blessing Ludwig was and is, through her recordings, for the world of music!

The sound is excellent, befitting the atmosphere of this composition perfectly. The ending, so calm, so deceivingly peaceful, will curdle your blood...

For 1965 the sound-quality on this disc is quite extraordinarily good - it would be that in 2004 - and Decca have every right to be proud of it. Everyone concerned has a right to be proud of the performance too. Ludwig and Berry are not only in superb voice, they seem to me to have penetrated to the heart of this dark and wonderful allegory. In the discussion that forms part of the liner-note Ludwig interrupts at one point to disagree with a certain view of Judith that she hears being expressed. No harm in that - this particular story is full of mystery. Only so much certainty is possible, and the ambiguity is essential to its power and magic.

For any music-lover struggling with Bartok - say with the quartets or the first piano concerto - this, or maybe the better-known violin concerto, would be the doors through which I would suggest approaching him. Purely at the musical level the idiom is modern without being forbidding or particularly challenging. Indeed the orchestration in Bluebeard is among the most thrilling I have ever heard, and Kertesz and the LSO (then at its very peak) do it proud. This is a short drama - a story like this can only be stretched out for a finite length - and the dark and sinister sense of fear and foreboding must never relax in performance, nor do they in this performance. The story is a powerfully convincing one to me, and I do not know how many of my own sex I can speak for, although I suspect it's most of us. In my view, which is a totally impressionistic and unscientific one as far as this is concerned, a man has a mental and emotional hinterland that nobody should try to trespass on. `Nobody' means not wife, not parent, not child, not the closest friend. It is irrespective of the most intense love that may be involved, and it can come up against an equally deep-seated female urge to know the man in her life as deeply as she can. It will not, in many cases, involve anything particularly dark, dramatic or seeming to demand secrecy, but I sense rightly or wrongly that it is a basic part of the male psyche. What this whole story dramatises with intense effect is the self-destructive power of the clash between these basic male and female tendencies. Bluebeard and Judith are not individuals in my view but types, and nowhere could provide a more atmospheric background for this modern morality-play than the seemingly `transylvanian' castle where Bluebeard and Judith open the doors that should perhaps not have been opened.

It all lasts not quite an hour, and far from leaving me emotionally drained as I might have expected it left me even exhilarated by the sheer truthfulness of it, to say nothing of the quite wonderful music and the quite wonderful way it is enacted. The English version of the libretto struck me as slightly odd with its stilted idiom, thou's thine's and similar nonsense until I saw who it was by - Christopher Hassall, the man who killed Walton's Troilus and Cressida at birth or before. I suppose he was responsible for the English version of the stage-directions too, as I took leave of the drama with the wives of Bluebeard progressing along a beam of `moonshine'. As well as the main liner-note, Decca have understandably and very helpfully included a technical leaflet on the recording technology which, as I have said, is something they are very entitled to preen themselves on. I only wondered why with so much top technology at their disposal they could not have got the leaflet to fit the box a bit more exactly.

Though we are fortunate to have several recordings of Bela Bartok's sole opera "Bluebeard's Castle" on CD today, this old recording with Kertesz conducting the huge orchestral sound of the LSO to join with Walter Berry's and Christa Ludwig's impeccable characterizations is still the best available. The other worldly sounds of the opening of each of the seven doors in the darkly sinister castle that will be the home for yet another wife for Bluebeard continue to create sublime illusions of every scene described. Richly sung and passionately conducted, don't let the age of this recording deter you adding it to your collection. Excellent on every level. Even the sonics sound completely modern!

.
Source: Studio recording made in Kingsway Hall, London, November 1965.

Sound: State of the art analogue stereo that received high praise when it was issued in 1966. The second digital remastering, done in 1999, has been very successful. More acute ears than mine have noted the sound of the occasional tape join and some slight hiss. I do not go searching for such things and I certainly have not heard them on my copy.

Text: The work is performed in Hungarian as "A Kekszkallu herceg vara." [Sorry about the forms of the vowels, but Amazon has not been accepting my properly spelled foreign words recently.] The 28-line spoken verse prologue has not been recorded.

Documentation: Libretto in Hungarian joined with the standard, very loose, English singing translation by Christopher Hassall. Brief memoir on the origin of this recording. Short record of a conversation between Kertesz and Ludwig in which the conductor provides his interpretation of some aspects of the story. Track list shows timings.

Format: One disk - eight tracks; 59:30.

Cast: Bluebeard - Walter Berry; Judith - Christa Ludwig. Conductor: Istvan Kertesz with the London Symphony Orchestra.

In 1911, the thirty year-old Bartok began setting the libretto of "A Kekszkallu herceg vara" ["Duke Bluebeard's Castle"] by his friend, Bela Balasz. It was not performed until 1918. Because it is performed in opera houses and involves two people singing over an orchestra, the piece is casually lumped into the category of opera. To me, though, an opera is a sung drama or comedy--and "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" most assuredly is neither. It is at most a ritual, or perhaps no more than a mere reverie.

Just as Beethoven did a century earlier with "Fidelio," Bartok came to opera as a man of the concert platform, not of the theater. He provided little or no real drama for his singers; their characters have neither choice nor conflict. All the drama, all the color of the work, and Bartok crammed in a great deal of both, are to be found in his orchestra. The orchestra embarks on a impressive tonal voyage, but the singers merely utter their symbolic words on pitch.

And the symbolism? Well, let's face it, even for 1918 the symbols were absurdly simple-minded. Their simplicity, however, does not make them unambiguous. Here is how Kertesz is quoted: This "Bluebeard story is quite different from the fairy tale. The point is that all the blood is his blood. It means his suffering. Everything happens in the imagination". Being clearly on Bluebeard's side, he goes on to say that Judith is "horrible to him. She does not want him; she just wants to open his doors." Ludwig, naturally, is quoted as holding quite a different view.

Christa Ludwig and her then husband, Walter Berry were operatic aristocracy. They sing brilliantly here, particularly in light of the thin stuff provided by Bartok. That is not a matter of debate. Do they sing authentically? I haven't the slightest idea. The good, grey Gramophone Magazine says they lack the "texture and tang of native Hungarian singers". That may be so, although I can only wonder if a London-based English reviewer is any better judge than I am on the point.

The orchestra sounds terrific. Kertesz's approach is a little more subtle and inner-directed than is to be found in other recordings I have heard which are given more to the boom and bang approach.

On the whole, this is an excellent and classic recording. I can't vouch for its authenticity but I can assure you that it will give any sympathetic listener a full hour of pleasure.

Five stars.

(For those who find this work particularly appealing, I suggest that it might be worth your while to look into Korngold's much-underrated Twentieth Century masterpiece, "Die Tote Stadt," which traverses some of the same territory.)

I normally don't seek out an experience that is dark and disturbing. Now, this is a dark opera, to be sure, but I am astonished at what a beautiful and powerful opera it is. The music is perfect - the chords, the way the melody supports the vocal lines, the mood that is so perfectly established. This is essentially a psychological tale, in fact the prologue asks us to ponder if this is a story of within (psychological) or without. It is the story of a man who begs his wife not to dig too deep, but she can't help it, she continues to push, until... it is too late. The singing is fantastic. The orchestra playing is lush, the sound quality first rate. Now that I have heard this piece I think the biggest tragedy is that Bartok didn't write more operas. He shows tremendous compositional skill and a great sense of how to unfold the drama that I feel sometimes composers miss. Get your hands on this CD.

Like so many devotees of this spectacular recording, I am no fan of Bartok in general, but this piece transcends any general opinion I might have of his idiom; it is one of the most complete and involving performances in the whole operatic catalogue. Unlike some operas, whereby you simply resign yourself to sitting back and enjoying the music in spite of the risible plot or lumbering libretto ("Ernani" and "Le Villi" come to mind), or whereby the words seems to take precedence over the music (some of Hofmannsthal's more abstruse efforts for Strauss?), this opera embodies the perfect fusion between words and music, between drama and beauty of form, much as Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande" - a clear influence on Bartok - does. No problem here with "prima la musica, dopo le parole" - or vice versa!

First, as so many have already noted, the Decca sound engineers triumphed; you would never guess that this recording is well over forty years old, so full and atmospheric is the sound. The unearthly, otherworldly groans accompanying the opening of Bluebeard's doors to his secret chambers are enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck prickle and the major chord sequence accompanying the flinging wide of the door onto Bluebeard's kingdom is one of the great moments in recording history.

The performances are also superlative; Berry has just the right combination of power and mystery in his voice and Ludwig manages to make Judith shrewish and importunate without dehumanising her or making ugly sounds - quite the reverse; her voice is in prime condition. I have to smile at other English speakers passing judgement on the authenticity of their Hungarian; I speak some other languages but have absolutely no idea whether their accents are good. They certainly sound convincing and I cannot imagine that either Kertesz or the (then) husband and wife team of Ludwig and Berry would have allowed poor preparation to scupper such a great enterprise. So pronouncements such as some English speaking reviewers make seem to me to be presumptuous, otiose and self-important; one declares that their delivery is good "even if it lacks the full bite and snap of singers emoting in their native language". How does he know? They sound snappy enough to me and I will stand correction only from a native speaker. My only regret about this recording is that the decision was not taken to include the spoken prologue which, oddly enough, is included in the BBC English language version with Gwynne Howell as a memorable Bluebeard (and Sally Burgess a bit shrill). An English translation is overlaid while another narrator intones the verse in Hungarian in the background, to haunting effect. (I should also like to hear the English version with the great Jerome Hines, but have been unable to find a copy.)

So forget any pre-conceived idea you might have about the merits of Bartok's music or your taste for it, and sample one of the greatest complete operatic experiences that a mere CD can provide. This is what opera should be - and too often, sadly, isn't.

I am not a Bartok fan. I generally do not listen to Bartok. Neither have I listened to any other Bluebeard - this is the only one I have. The only reason I bought this set is that I heard it was good and since I managed to get a dirt cheap price for the set, why not try and listen. I was pleasantly surprised. Once I started listening, I was spell-bound!! The music is good. But even more importantly, the singing is superb!! It's unbelievable how good Christa ludwig and Walter Berry are. In fact, even if the music did not sound nice (which is not the case), just listening to Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry vocalizing would be worth the purchase. The two of them have such gorgeous voices that I could just sit there and listen to them all day long. Furthermore, both singers sing with a lot of dramatic sense and make this experience a really thrilling one. I've had experiences where I listen to a favorite piece by a mediocre performer, and I simply get bored even though the music is nice because the performers spoils the piece. Similarly, there are pieces which I am not too enthusiastic about, but some performers imbue them with so much beauty, power and life that I become fanatic about these pieces. This recording is one of those that fall into the latter category. It goes to show that the performers matter a lot!! And this is a fantastic performance which I highly recommend to all. It is worthy of being in the Decca Legends series. To borrow the quote on the cover (which is completely accurate in this case), "Astonishingly evocative and full of atmosphere ... Must count as one of Decca's great operatic recordings .. This is a thrilling recording of a great work. Gramophone." Don't just believe it, experience it yourself!!

Decca Records....The very name seems to bring warm thoughts and feelings to one's body and mind...

What a "richer" place the world is, because of Decca, RCA, EMI (and of course, also, Philips, Deutsche Grammophone, and Columbia Records). These companies pioneered sound (and recordings) for us, and through their efforts, we have, currently, little silver discs (formerly, of course, Shiny Black LP's), that document and preserve both their technical achievements and those of the artists/participants of these recordings.

So, "Thank You Very Much" of course deserves to go to these companies for making our lives so much richer.

The Review...

One of these Pioneering Achievements, make no doubt about it, is this Magnificent recording of Bela Bartok's lone opera, Duke Bluebeard's Castle (A kékszakkallú Herceg Vára). The sonic achievement of this recording, for clearness, spaciousness, and simply breadth and range will amaze you if you are not famaliar already with it. This recording will probably forever stand as one of the greatest achievements in sound ever done, as it has from it's release right up until today. There is one KnockOut rival*, but it DOES NOT replace it! (see below)

If you are unfamiliar with this work, you are in for a REAL TREAT. If you do not understand it, that's ok, wait a couple days, and play it again! (I'm sure you know how this works, if you have experience with Classical Music and Opera).

Christa Ludwig, let's face it, was simply one of the towering dramatic sopranos of the 20th century, bar none. Her then husband, at the time of this recording, Walter Berry, was a baritone who also certainly held his own on the stages throughout Europe for many many years, and those in America, also, though to a lesser degree.

This opera is a very psychologically powerful work, as is Richard Strauss' "Elektra"........both of them grip one and take you to places that, while you are uncomfortable with it, you willingly allow yourself to be taken there. Both of these operas seem to have a "magnetism" that you cannot shake loose until the final bar/resolve of the work.

Istvan Kertesz, unfortunately, did not live long enough to become "golden" in the eyes of the public like Bohm, Maazel, or Levine, etc., so few know of him today. He was simply one of the most gifted conductors of his time, as was Michael Tilson Thomas. This man immediately takes control over his forces, and Bartok's "blue-black" score, and brings it up to the point that you are mesmerized or locked into it and are not willing to pull yourself out of it. This is powerful music.

Ludwig, of all the people to tackle this role, has NEVER been overshadowed by Anyone Else's performance or rendition of Judith. The shining sense of innocence of the world comes with her into the dark, damp and hopelessly depressing castle. As the doors open, she traverses the "darknesses" that they each hold, and becomes a "world wise" and weary woman as the last door closes into total blackness. Crista Ludwig makes you believe this is a real girl taking this journey, and you believe her progression as she makes the trip to the end, hanging on to her every breath. Few can do this type of role where you have the stage "to yourself" for the duration of an opera and you don't "flag" at any point.

The same can be said for Walter Berry's Duke Bluebeard. His baritone is just captivating. His voice, rich and dark, just draws you in, willingly. You hang onto his every word, and like Judith, you "have to know more".

At the end of this hour's passing, you find that you are astounded that you have been so deeply engrossed or enveloped by this story. So many times I have sat afterwards and wondered "What would a three act version of this opera have been like?"

I realize I have, again, rambled on. Sometimes, when you're wound up in something, it's not possible to express what you want to convey in short clipped sentences. This is a "felt"(as much as any other aspect of it) work.

Trust my judgement from listening to many recordings of this special work over the years (since the 60's) this recording needs to be on your shelves FIRST before any other recording of it. ~operabruin

*That said, I will now make a comment on the rival recording. The EMI release with Anne Sophie von Otter, John Tomlinson, and Bernard Haitink also belongs on your shelves, if you can justify owning two versions of this great great work. (I have 7 recordings of it, and consider all 7 of them viable in one form or another). (see my review of this recording on Amazon here, for more information.) It does not "knock out" the Kertesz recording just reviewed, but it "BELONGS BESIDE IT."

This is a must have recording for opera lovers. I would go as far as to say it is the definitive recording of "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" Both Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry are in excellent voice and acting ability and bring the recording to life and make it hard to stop listening to. I got so involved that I didn't realize an hour had gone by while I was listening to it! The London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Istvan Kertesz plays sublimely and with great emotion to match that of the singers. This is on one disc but there is a fascinating booklet about the opera and a full libretto in Hungarian and English. The recording was originally released in 1965 and sounds GREAT. The balance between singers and orchestra is just right and the loud and soft parts are not extremely so. Have no hesitation in buying this CD.

My review might not be welcomed by some among the classic musical fans as i am not really into classical music (although lately i am becoming very interested in the music of the 20th century masters-you know who they are-Stravinsky, Satie, Varese, Webern, Schoenberg, Nacanrow and, of course, Bartok, among others). Anyway,
I was flipping channels on TV and suddenly there it was. The DVD version of this opera. I was stunned at the quality of the music but also at the surreality of the story.
This is dark, complex and beautiful. Just what any prog rock fan is looking for in music. The whole project stays away from melodic conventionality and numerous passages sound down right creepy (yeah!). Any Magma, Art Zoyd, Univers Zero or Present fan will at least enjoy the dark aspect in this tremendous work. I don't know if this is 'the best version' of this work but it sure sounds like they played 'with passion'. If you are a rock or prog rock fan i would suggest you get the piano micro-cosmos from Bartok (which is how i got into his music) but come to this masterpiece once you get acquainted with his more 'popular' works. Music with REAL cojones. Long live Bartok.