1928 KARL MUCK PARSIFAL ACT III M-67 Gotthilf Pistor Cornelius Bronsgeest78

$

45

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I am currently selling a series of great Richard Wagener and classic European 78 rpm orchestral recordings on all the great European labels:

A festival of German Singers - great recordings on 78 rpm records on all the great European and US labels:

KARL MUCK conducting the first complete (non-potted) recording of a WAGNER OPERA, the famous 1928 ACT III of PARSIFAL.

In superb Victor Album M-67, the complete set consists a variety of pressings: scroll, gold ring and Z shellac pressing. See below

Karl Muck

ò         Act III

 Muck turned to act III in the following year. This slightly cut recording of the third act of Wagner's final opus is of high musical and vocal quality. It is very intesting because of its conductor, Karl Muck, who was in the pit of the Festspielhaus for a long time, especially in the case of Parsifal. This third act is the first major attempt to record a major part of Parsifal on 78rpm discs with a consistent cast and the only one, too. In it's importance we can compare it with Bruno Walter's first Walk?re act.

In this complete 1928 recording of Act III of Parsifal with the Berlin State Opera orchestra/ chorus , and stellar singers:

Performed by Gotthelf Pistor, Cornelius Bronsgeest, Ludwig Hofmann

On 8 12" Pre War Gold Label 78 rpm records in the lyre style album and booklet.

CONDITION: EXCELLENT exceptionally quiet. Most sides have small rim chips not affecting play.

Chip on side 15 goes about 2 mm into grooves, causes harsh swish for first five turns, faint scratch causes rare click at start of 3

Album is great and solid, with a small spot on cover

For truly great performances of Parsifal on record (and there are very few) you have to look back in time, and invariably to the Bayreuth Festival. Hans Knappertsbusch conducted many performances at Bayreuth after the war and of these his1962 recording is the best, a visionary and cultured reading. Even greater, however, are these recordings on Naxos of Karl Muck conducting Parsifal, excerpts from Acts I and II, with Act III almost complete. Recorded in the studio, with Bayreuth forces, in 1927 and 1928, they are unmatched, particularly the final act which receives the greatest performance yet to appear on disc. No where else is the symphony of this act so compellingly realised.

Karl Muck is the nearest we have to a direct Wagner link, mainly through his relationship with Wagner's widow, Cosima. Born in 1859, he conducted Parsifal regularly at Bayreuth after 1901 and became something of a Wagner specialist. Comparable to Toscanini, Strauss and Weingartner in his advocacy of objective music making, his Wagner is noted for a disciplined clarity, with textures opening up to reveal the pulse of the music. These fine recordings, the outcome of sessions he did with Columbia, are representative of this.

Parsifal opens with a long prelude that sets the tension for the whole opera, a tension that is never released until the heavenly choral conclusion of Parsifal conducting communion with the Knights of the Holy Grail. The music at points reaches stasis, and in no other opera does Wagner rely on pure silence to achieve the effect of etherealism. Muck's conducting of the prelude is very slow (in my experience only Toscanini has been slower on a 1930s BBC recording, although that performance lacks mystery). The breadth of the tempo, from the opening in A flat major, makes the most of blending the themes played out on violins and cellos and combined clarinets and bassoons. The wind chorale that symbolises the guilt of Amfortas is played with pungency and the hushed, tremolando strings are precisely that. Few preludes on record are as clearly shaped and defined as this with the vast diatonic spaces of the music given a supreme nobility.

 Similar depth of sound and tension are evident in the playing of the "Transformation Music" to Act I. This extraordinary, angst-ridden music is one of Wagner's great creations, music of extreme dissonance and languorous lamentation. Trombones bray above a great swathe of lush string melody as the music seems to both collapse and rise under the weight of the march that precedes the tolling of the bells. These bells, an ostinato theme in C, G, A and E appear firstly alone, but later play in unison with the bass instruments. Originally, Wagner had suggested that Chinese tamtams might offer the sound he needed, but in the end he had specially constructed metal canisters made to achieve the appropriate pitch. These became known as the Bells of Monslavet, and are heard on this recording (the only recording to exist with the original bell sounds. The bells were melted down by the German's during World War II.). The effect is very different from most performances of this scene you will hear - where the sound is invariably much brighter. Here there is a real hollowness and terror to the sound.

As I have suggested, Act III is the most symphonic of the opera. Here Muck includes all the major orchestral interludes - the prelude, the Act III Transformation Music and the Good Friday Music. The Act III Prelude probably includes the most desolate music Wagner ever wrote and although thematically the music is similar to the Act I Prelude its despondency is less clearly navigated by many conductors. The second act ends in the black key of B minor, and right from the outset of the prelude Muck makes the tension between B major and B flat minor the key to his interpretation. This music is all about anguish, despondency and distress. It fails to elude to the fact that it is now springtime, the music sinking under the weight of its own interminableness. By contrast, his reading of the Good Friday Music is light and lyrical, with an almost vocal strength deriving from his balancing of the textures. In few Wagner records is the tension between gravity and nature as well manipulated as here. Where needed, Muck can compel his musicians to make the right sound: an astringent oboe here, a cavernous brass sound there, strings ladened with depth. The superb playing makes understanding this opera slightly easier: polyphony and dissonance are materially integrated, layers of chords and voices are skillfully overlapped.

And the singers? Alexander Kipnis, in a separate reading of the Good Friday Spell under the baton of the composer's son, Siegfried, is superbly dark and broad-toned.

The transfers of these legendary recordings are quite astonishing, and certainly the best to have yet appeared. The recording, although dating from just two years after microphone recording became possible, offer clear acoustics and real bloom. There is a very natural surrounding spaciousness, the strings remastered with their depth intact, the Monslavet Bells clearly unique, and the brass and woodwind capable of the most focused forte. The importance of the recording itself underlines why the 1913 recordings under Alfred Hertz are only of slight interest. Although one of the most ambitious recording projects of the acoustic era it is evident how crowded the sound is, with balances often very wayward indeed. The brass is often very clearly evident, whilst the strings barely register.

Here is a web-review of Muck and this recording:

Karl Muck (1859--1940), one of the greatest Wagnerian conductors of the generation immediately following those who knew and worked directly with the master, was responsible for leading the performances of Parsifal at Bayreuth from 1901 until 1930. Wagner's last opera was, in a word, Muck's property, and this recording documents his unique and intense relationship with that work in exemplary fashion. It contains Muck's accounts of the Prelude to Act I and a sizeable amount of Act III, recorded with the chorus and orchestra of the Berlin State Opera, and of excerpts from Acts I and II, recorded with the chorus and orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival. The recordings, made in 1927 and 1928, reflect the glow of a golden age in Wagner interpretation.

The great Wagnerian soprano Frida Leider, whose voice is not heard on these recordings, encountered Muck in his later years at Bayreuth and was struck by the slowness of his tempos in Parsifal. Indeed, they are slow: the Act I prelude takes 15:55 by the clock and seems even longer, yet the effect is sublime. Muck sustains the prelude as if on a single breath, just at the point where the pulse almost disappears; the music seems to arise out of silence and darkness to become light and spirit. This is just what Wagner intended. The Act III excerpts, which feature tenor Gotthelf Pistor as Parsifal and bass Ludwig Hofmann as Gurnemanz, are also superb. Pistor's is quite a fine voice--he was a real heldentenor--and the drama is palpable. But the greatest treasure here is the playing of the State Opera orchestra. Muck had been its chief conductor for 20 years, from 1892, and the chemistry between him and his erstwhile colleagues is particularly remarkable. They are majestic in the "Good Friday Spell" , and they bring enormous grandeur and radiance to the closing pages of the opera. What a superb band this was!

The segments recorded in Bayreuth are only a little less enchanting, largely because the chorus preparation leaves a lot to be desired (the chromaticism in Wagner's writing was difficult then, and still is). But we hear the original Bayreuth bells in the Act I transformation music (they were carried up to Berlin for the Act III processional music as well): cast to Wagner's own specifications, and melted down for the German war effort in 1940, they are truly a "voice" from the past.

The two discs are superbly laid out and include, in addition to the Muck material, a four-part orchestral suite from Parsifal conducted by Alfred Hertz and recorded in 1913 with the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as the "Good Friday Spell" played by the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra under the direction of Siegfried Wagner, the composer's son, recorded in 1927. The transfers by Mark Obert-Thorn are the best yet of these historic recordings. --Ted Libbey

Karl Muck (October 22, 1859 û March 3, 1940) was a German conductor

Born in Darmstadt, Germany, Muck earned a Ph.D. in classical philolology at Heidelberg. An early love for music led him to take piano lessons. After earning his doctorate, Muck entered the Leipzig Conservatory. He began conducting in 1884 and led orchestras in Zurich, Brno, Salzburg, Graz, and Prague. In 1892 he began conducting the Royal Opera in Berlin, where he remained until 1912. Along the way he also conducted at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth and also worked with the Vienna Philharmonic.[1]

He became music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1912. He was considered a modern, adventurous conductor and was responsible for leading the orchestra in historic recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, in 1917.

In 1918, Muck was accused of sympathising with the enemy during World War I for conducting performances of German music. After declining the request of a performance of the Star Spangled Banner during a concert, Muck was arrested under the Alien Enemies Act and imprisoned at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia for the duration war.[2] After his deportation from the United States, he was never to return. Muck is one of two German conductors believed to have been expelled from the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity for sympathizing with the Axis forces.

Muck went on to lead the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra, made additional recordings and appeared regularly in Bayreuth.

Muck died in Stuttgart, Germany.

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