Customer Reviews

Wagner: Tannhauser

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...Not Overwhelming as a great Tannhäuser should be. The blame here lies on the conductor and the title character, neither of whom stir up much excitement. I've not heard much of Klaus König elsewhere, only Bernstein's "Ode to Freedom" performance of the Beethoven 9th. He sings well enough, with a somewhat dry but attractive sound that never varies one iota. (Much like Hans Hopf on the old Franz Konwitschny/EMI set.) The essence of the character is that he is swamped by his passions, and here we get an attractive, but merely mechanical, reading of the score.

Bernard Haitink is also disappointing. I've much enjoyed some of his live opera work: the Covent Garden Don Carlo and the Zürich Parsifal particularly.
But in the studio some his opera recordings haven't really caught fire. He conducts a well paced, but somewhat stodgy performance of teh Dresen version of the score.

On the plus side, though is all of the remainder of the cast:
Lucia Popp was known at first as an outstanding and beloved lyric coloratura (one of the best Queens of the Night ever!) and slowly worked here way into heavier repertoire, in the manner of Hilde Güden and Gundula Janowitz. Elizabeth was the heaviest part she took on records.(Her Elsa in Lohengrin was never recorded.) There are occasional hints of strain, like the voice brought just to the edge of its limits, but it never breaks or turns unpleasant. These moments only occur at emotional extremes, so they seem entirely appropriate in context. Sadly, she succumbed to a brain tumor not too long after this recording was made.
Bernd Weikl stands among the best interpreters of Wolfram von Eschenbach ever, along with Friedrich Schorr and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He a little past his best here, but still quite fine.
Waltraut Meier is an excellent Venus, though I sometimes find her edgy tone a little lacking in voluptuous warmth a la Christa Ludwig or Tatyana Troyanos.
She is of course hampered by her stick-in-the-mud partner.
Kurt Moll may be the finest Landgraf Hermann on recordings, though I'd call it a tie with Hans Sotin. He starts his scene with Elizabeth in Act II pianissimo (a specialty of his) and then really lets it rip in the "Ein furchtbares Verbrechen" pages later on.
Siegried Jerusalem, always a thoughtful and poetic interpreter, makes much of Walther von der Vogelweide's lovely turn in the song contest, a bit I always miss in the Paris version.

Over all, this is an unsuccessful reading in many ways, but very much of interest to fans of Lucia Popp and Kurt Moll. But not as a first or only recording.