(+++) PAST AND PRESENT

Wagner: Music conducted by Siegfried Wagner. Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Berlin State Opera Orchestra, and London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Siegfried Wagner. Ariadne. $29.98 (2 CDs). 

Henriette Renié: Retrospective—Historical Harp Recordings, 1927-1955. Henriette Renié, harp. MSR Classics. $19.95 (2 CDs). 

     Remasterings of very old recordings, however skillfully and lovingly done, will always be niche products, of interest primarily to audiences with a special interest in one element or another of musical-performance history. Every once in a while, though, along comes an item that – despite its inherently limited appeal – is enough to send shivers up a listener’s spine. That is the case with the recording in which Siegfried Wagner (1869-1930) leads the London Symphony Orchestra in the Siegfried Idyll, which Siegfried’s father explicitly wrote for Siegfried’s birth and originally intended to keep private forever. Hearing this near-century-old recording (from 1927) performed under the direction of the person for whom the music was created provides a bridge to some of the most famous music of the Romantic era – and the exceptional lyricism and beauty of the performance turn it into a glowing tribute as well as, perhaps, an assertion of individuality and accomplishment that was generally beyond Siegfried Wagner during his storm-tossed lifetime. The exceptional quality of Lani Spahr’s restorations of this performance and the others on a new two-CD Ariadne release can do nothing about the inherent hollowness and sound compression of 1920s recordings: there is just no way to “restore” rich brass, emphatic percussion and elegant woodwinds when the original recordings were incapable of rendering them with any significant degree of accuracy. But to the extent that modern techniques can again make it possible to hear Siegfried Wagner’s performances as they sounded when originally released to the public, Spahr provides a truly exceptional bridge between recording eras as distant from each other as the 19^th century is from the 21^st. In fact, the very quiet backgrounds and total absence of tape hiss show just how much better these restorations are than were the originals. It remains true that no one is going to consider this release to be any more than a curiosity and a historically informed (and important) element of the Richard Wagner discography. But it is nevertheless a superb accomplishment. The first CD includes the gods’ entry into Valhalla from Das Rheingold, the Valkyries’ ride and Wotan’s farewell (with the magic fire music) from Die Walküre, the Act III Prelude from Parsifal, and two versions of that opera’s Good Friday spell – one orchestral, the other featuring Fritz Wolff as Parsifal and a remarkably full-voiced Alexander Kipnis as Gurnemanz. What quickly becomes clear from this disc is that Siegfried Wagner gravitated to the warmer, more-expressive elements of his father’s music to a greater extent than the highly dramatic (and frequently more-familiar) ones. There is nothing special or even particularly exciting here in the Valkyries’ ride, but the Parsifal excerpts and the faster-yet-more-expressive-than-usual Siegfried Idyll showcase a conductor with a finely honed sense of the gorgeous but sometimes overshadowed expressiveness of so much of Richard Wagner’s music. The second CD in this set includes, in addition to the Siegfried Idyll, the less-than-memorable Huldigungsmarsch, the guests’ entry from Tannhäuser, an exceptionally lovely Act I Prelude to Lohengrin, and the Act I Prelude and Liebestod (orchestral version) from Tristan und Isolde. This exceptionally interesting release then concludes with Siegfried Wagner’s sole surviving commercial recording of one of his own works: the overture to the first of his 12 operas, Der Bärenhäuter – music that turns out to be both attractive and highly forgettable, affirming that, as with other children of great composers (F.X. Mozart and Eduard Strauss’ son, Johann III, for example), the musical contributions of the later generation were modest at best. And yet the chance to hear an excellently remastered set of Siegfried Wagner’s performances of works by his father is an undeniably fascinating one. 

     The potential audience for an MSR Classics remastering of performances by Henriette Renié (1875-1956) is likely to be even more modest. Here too the audio restoration, some of which involves performances as old as those by Siegfried Wagner, is first-rate: David v.R. Bowles and Richard Price not only make these harp recordings as clean and clear as possible but even succeed to a considerable extent in pitch correction. Renié herself, and harp music in general, are not as widely followed as are Richard Wagner’s works, but for harpists (many of whom continue to train using Renié’s method) and listeners fond of the harp in general – and of Renié’s own compositions and performances in particular – this recording will be treasurable. Thirteen of the 14 tracks on the first disc offer Renié’s own works, intriguingly presented chronologically based on their publication dates – so listeners enamored of Renié and her compositional as well as pedagogical contributions can hear in what ways and to what extent her style developed over time. Included here are pieces ranging from her very earliest, Andante religioso, through the Concerto in C minor of 1901 (a breakthrough work for her as both composer and performer), Légende (1903), Pièce symphonique (1907), Danse des lutins of 1911 (whose recording won her a Prix du Disque), and more. The final track on the first CD, a 70-second encore of sorts, is La Commère by Couperin; and the second disc offers another short Couperin work along with pieces by Liszt (four), D. Scarlatti (two), Debussy, Respighi, Rameau, Haydn, Schubert, Mozart, Chopin, and Prokofiev (one each). Renié also is heard in pieces by almost entirely unknown composers: two by Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772) and one each by Félix Godefroid (1818-1897), Albert Zabel (1834-1910), and Henri Büsser (1872-1973). Speaking of hearing, audiences get to listen to Renié’s voice as well as her harp – in spoken introductions (in French, of course) that help give this fascinating release a true sense of camaraderie among listeners and the feeling of a pleasant salon-recital-plus-masterclass delivered in both spoken and performed manner by one of the great harpists and harp pedagogues of the 20^th century. Limited in appeal this recording will certainly be, but it will be of inestimable value to harpists today and immensely pleasurable simply for listening purposes for audiences that will appreciate not only Renié’s skill but also the exceptional ability that top-notch technicians now have to remaster genuinely important recordings of earlier times.