Customer Reviews

Wagner: The Complete Karl Muck Parsifal Recordings, Orchestral Suite, etc / Muck

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It was a pleasure indeed to hear this set on CD, I purchased Karl Muck's Parsifal Act III excerpts on a Lebendige Vergangenheit (Living History) LP close to 20 years ago. The first transfers from the original 78s were effective and these new transfers have further reduced background hiss and noise. The sound quality in the Alfred Hertz excerpts, made in September, 1913, is significantly worse than all the others, which were done in 1927 and 1928. According to the excellent program notes electrical recording came into use around 1925. It is also noted, and very audible, that the 1882 Bayreuth bells in the Transformation Music are at a significantly lower pitch than the orchestras of the 1920s. The effect remains startling nonetheless.

This set is not for everybody, as it contains 3 performances of the Good Friday Music, one of which is purely orchestral, and two accounts of the Act I Prelude. Both CDs play for almost 80 minutes. In general the woodwind and string playing can be heard most clearly, and Gotthelf Pistor's assumption of the title role is strong and clear in spite of the great age of the recording.

Artistically, I consider Karl Muck's reading of Parsifal to be peerless. The Act III excerpts are very moving in spite of the constricted sound, and one cannot help but admire the efforts of all the performers, since they were using very short takes for recording onto 78s. I don't think anyone today could take the Good Friday Music and split it into 3 sections, and make it sound on record as if there were no interruptions at all. The contributions by Alfred Hertz and Siegfried Wagner are not quite in the same class, but are also well worth hearing.

Overall, at the lowest price range, this cannot be too strongly recommended, even at the risk of duplicating prior releases. A desert island set.

Karl Muck was one of the great Wagner conductors, with an uncanny feel for Wagner's music (and a resemblance to the composer that was so uncanny that people thought that he was Wagner's illegitimate son!). Now his recordings of Wagner's final opera are on this 2-CD set from Naxos.

Along with the Muck recordings from 1927 and 1928, there are also recordings of music from Parsifal by Siegfried Wagner (the composer's son) and Alfred Hertz (the latter excerpts were recorded in 1913, in the acoustic era, and some sonic allowances should be made for them).

But you'll be buying this set (as I hope you will) for the Karl Muck tracks. They are truly amazing. When you consider that he was forced to record this music on 78 R.P.M. records in snippets of three minutes or so, the quality of his performances is astounding. Audio Restoration Engineer Mark Obert-Thorn has done a marvellous job restoring these discs so that they sound as good as they possibly can, and Naxos has put them out at an unbeatable price. If you have any interest in Wagner at all, I would grab this set.

One more thing. On the 6th track of the first disc, Muck conducts the Transformation Music for the Grail Scene in Act I. In that scene you hear the bells that Wagner had constructed for the first performances of Parsifal at his own theater at Bayreuth (where these recordings were made). Those bells were later melted down by the Nazis for ammunition during World War II. Listen for them -- they carry you right back to the sound that Wagner must have heard at the premiere.

After reading the other reviews of this disc I couldn't wait to hear it. I'm not disappointed. The only caveat about this set is some widely scattered distortion that the filtering couldn't remove. That being said, the Karl Muck "Parsifal" selections, which are the reason to buy this disc, could hardly be better. In comparison with much more expensive vintage discs from EMI, DG and Music and Arts from the 30's and 40's I have, these 1927 and 1928 recordings sound better! Compared to Barenboim's recent highlights on Teldec, this set offers far less sonic annoyance and almost infinitely more musical satisfaction. It is bliss, and Muck leaves it to you, the listener, to groan with pleasure. What Muck recorded here is about 40 minutes of Act 1, including Prelude, Transformation music, and a choral Grail Scene (no solists). Ditto the 5 minute Flower Maiden Scene from Act2. Then comes over an hour of Act 3, complete with soloists. Filling out the discs are a 1913 recording of the orchestral suite from the opera, and Siegfried Wagner's 1927 recording of the Good Friday Spell, so if you listen to both discs straight through, you'll hear that music 3 times, twice with soloists! I usually just listen to the Muck excerpts.

Hearing the legendary Bayreuth Bells, subsequently melted down by the Nazi's for cannon fodder, is a truly haunting experience. This is as close as we can get to what Wagner envisioned.