It sounds intriguing. I hope it is recorded and released in a timeous fashion and I live long enough to hear it!:lol:

 

Yes, should be interesting if they really go ahead and use the "Bayreuth Bark" that one hears on the ancient recordings.

 

Not clear to me where they intend to perform this cycle when it's ready--in Köln?
Would it not make sense, for an historically informed Ring cycle to actually take place in Bayreuth? To make the use of the acoustics there?

Not that I think for a minute that the Wagner family is going to let that happen....

 

This is certainly interesting and I would like to hear it, but . . . . . will it really be "authentic " in ay way ? Who knows ?
So far , Concerto Koln has done a period instrument Fliegende Hollander conducted by Bruno Weil which has been released on CD but which I have yet to hear . This features the original Dresden version of the opera and uses an orchestra of only about 60 musicians .
Several years ago, Simon Rattle conducted a period instrument Das Rheingold with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in concert form, and you can hear and see this on youtube. I've heard parts of t but have not gotten around to hearing the entire thing . The orchestra doesn't sound nearly as different from contemporary ones as Baroque and Classical ensembles .

 

Several years ago, Simon Rattle conducted a period instrument Das Rheingold with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in concert form, and you can hear and see this on youtube. I've heard parts of t but have not gotten around to hearing the entire thing . The orchestra doesn't sound nearly as different from contemporary ones as Baroque and Classical ensembles .

Seeing some of the youtube video (thank you for mentioning it), I would tend to agree. But looking at the orchestral musicians, the instruments they are playing are certainly "of a vintage," but not radically different from recently made instruments, at least in the winds and brass (save for the Wagner tubas, which definitely look contemporary). I would speculate the strings may be using mostly gut rather than metal, but the bows appear to be pretty much the same as what are used today. I don't have perfect pitch, so I can't tell if they are playing to a lower tuning than A=440.

 

Historically informed, in the musical as well as in the production; That would be a novelty. And Bayreuth would be the ideal place, but Katharina and her ideas leave a lot to be desired ...

 

Most of the instruments themselves in a Wagnerian orchestra are at least very close to what we would use today. Bill H. is right that nothing is radically different, but sometimes a bunch of smaller differences can add up to something bigger. I wouldn't have thought that a period instrument Verdi Requiem like John Eliot Gardiner's would have anything so different in it, and apart from wooden flutes, French bassoons, and a real cimbasso, there isn't much, but the texture is a little bit more transparent and the feel of the recording is somehow different enough to justify itself. So I guess we'll see what happens.

 

One wonders what a "historically-informed" Ring will mean beyond period instruments, which weren't very different from modern ones. Pitch differed from place to place, so presumably there is no "authentic" pitch. Will string players use portamento? How liberally? Will they play without vibrato? This is controversial. Are there records of timings to help in the choice of tempi? Whose tempi are "authentic"? Above all, who will sing, and how will they give us an authentic style? Do we even know what that is, and would we like it if we heard it? The infamous "Bayreuth bark" dates from the Cosima era, but Wagner himself loved singing in the "Italian style," and the best Wagner singers have always exhibited a firm legato line and understood how to use portamento, something virtually lost since the 1950s.

This will be interesting. I just hope it doesn't resemble Roger Norrington's attempts at "authentic" Wagner.

 

I saw a lecture about this project on YouTube about a year ago. It explained that research was done to find out which musicians participated in the premiere at that time and which instruments from which instrument makers they played. (Some of these instruments that were used back then are still preserved.) It was discovered that Wagner, for example, only wanted one particular flute and rejected other flutes.
Here is a link, but unfortunately it´s only in German, and there are no English subtitles
But on the screen in the background you can often see pictures of the instruments and the names of the musicians of the premiere, etc.

https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-holzblaeser-und-auffuehrungspraxis.html

But it also deals with many other important topics such as the correct tuning pitch, the use of instruments as they were built at that time (gut strings instead of steel strings, etc.), the placement of the orchestra, the use of vibrato etc.

About the brass instruments, for example, it was said:

"The E-flat or F instrument has a much rounder, fuller, more substantial sound than the modern B-flat trumpet, especially in the register in which most of the soloistic passages of Götterdämmerung are written. So from a performance standpoint, it's not right that we perform the works of the classics, as well as Richard Wagner's trumpet part, with the modern, short instruments."

I think it's great that historically informed performance practice has arrived in the 19th century, and is researching such things to get as close as possible to Wagner's ideas.

Pitch differed from place to place, so presumably there is no "authentic" pitch.

Among other things, the following was said on this subject:

"The tuning pitches have always raised a discussion relevant to performance, especially since, in addition to sound aspects, it entails consequences especially for the wind players and the singers. The nowadays common concert pitch a' = 440Hz was established only in 1939, much to the liking of string players and recording engineers in times of increasing radio broadcasting. Today, 442/443Hz is usually used in orchestras, but this was already prevalent in continental Europe between 1830 and 1870, and in Great Britain until the 1890s. In 1858, however, a ministerial commission in Paris agreed on the concert pitch of 435 Hz, which was practiced in the operatic and orchestral strongholds of Vienna and Munich, among others. According to the findings of those responsible for the Concerto Köln project, Wagner also appreciated this pitch, which puts him in the ranks of Verdi, Strauss, and later Harnoncourt, who spoke of a concert pitch that should not be raised."

One wonders what a "historically-informed" Ring will mean beyond period instruments, which weren't very different from modern ones.

As I said, there are definitely major differences; gut strings sound different than steel strings, Wagner favored certain instruments from certain instrument makers, and people today use instruments that are tuned completely differently, like the trumpet mentioned above.

In an interview in which he spoke about Mozart, Nikolaus Harnoncourt also mentioned Wagner:

"Today's trombones are simply too large. At a certain point, the trombones became so larger in scale that even the composers of the time, such as Wagner, were dissatisfied. He found the new, large instruments unsuitable for his early works and changed the instrumentation. Today, a normal orchestra plays everything with only one type of trombone, namely those that were already unsuitable for early Wagner, including the Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) or the Unvollendete (The "Unfinished"), for which they are even more unsuitable."

"Take, for example, the Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. If you listen to it with the wind instruments for which it was composed, then in some places you really have the feeling that the devil is farting. But if you play it with the modern tubas, then the devil went to the Berlin Music University beforehand and learned there how to flatulate nobly. Of course, I would only perform such a piece with original instruments."

Greetings,
Natural Horn

 

Guess I can get rid of my Solti, Karajan, Keilberth, Furtwangler and Knappertsbush Rings now.

 

I don't think we have anything to fear on that score Itullian.

 

Perhaps here the HIP has more things to do with the production, not the music playing, for Wagner himself is one of the earliest "modern conductors" that developed romantic practice that is commonly used nowadays. His German successors like Furtwangler, Knappertsbusch and Keilberth, who themselves had directly trained through the practice of that time, could not be less genuine in conveying the musical contents of Wagner's music than the present Japanese-American conductor who learned Wagner's work from books or tenth-hand performances.

 

Bruckner Anton, you're referring to Alan Gilbert who recently led a critically acclaimed concert performance of Das Rheingold with the New York Philharmonic at Geffen hall, formerly Avery Fisher hall . , including the superb Eric Owens as Alberich . I haven't heard Gilbert conduct Wagner yet, but I see no reason why he could not be an outstanding interpreter of this composer .
And I'm sure he's heard the Wagner recordings of Knappertsbusch , Furtwangler and other legendary Wagner conductors . In a recent interview with Opera News, Gilbert states how he has loved Wagner's music from his earliest years .
Gilbert would definitely deserve to invited to conduct at Bayreuth .

 

I wish they would put this much effort into giving us singers who sound like Lilli Lehmann and Hermann Winkelmann, especially as we actually have recordings of them.

 

Indeed, how can they present an historically informed Ring cycle when we all know the singing will be sub-par and therefore will not properly represent the vocal art of the XIXth century? And it's not like voices did not matter much in opera... I do not have a lot of hope for such a project...

 

"(…) Concerto Köln is endeavoring with the linguistic institute of the University of Halle to get to the bottom of Wagner's German and it´s pronunciation. In this context, the Deutsche Gesangsunterricht ("German singing lesson") of Julius Hey, elocution teacher and Wagner's singing coach in Bayreuth, prove to be a good source. This against the background of Wagner's poetry and his demand to "speak proper German" and to sing with good vocality."

Bad diction is a result of wrong vocal development and technique, and it's not the main reason today's singers sound nothing like Lehmann. They don't sound like Lehmann because of the inferior technique they've learned. They would have to train singers from scratch to have 19th century vocal technique in order to get a singer who sings like Lehmann. Elocution lessons on top of modern technique won't do anything. And if the singers don't have the old technique, then why should we care whether the orchestra has the original flute? A voice is an instrument just like a flute, and today's singers have totally inauthentic instruments. Until somebody can train singers like Lehmann again, there can't be anything close to a historically authentic Ring.

Natural horns and trumpets begin to blare even at lower volumes, and sound raw, "scratchy," aggressive. A composer who wrote for these instruments knew about these characteristics and composed his music so that the volume and sound balance was right. He also considered the dynamic marks.

This is exactly why it's so important to have the right vocal technique.

 

I prefer to rate a HIP-recording after I have heard it.



Greetings,
Natural Horn

 

I'm not reviewing the recording, I'm saying that if there aren't period instruments (ie voices "built" in the 19th century, bel canto manner) available they can't make an period-instrument recording. You don't need to hear the recording to know that. If there are any singers like that out there that I don't know about, I would be delighted to be made aware of them, and then by all means, make the HIP Ring.

 

My pause with this, in addition to the vocal issues that many have expressed, is the authenticity of the conducting and playing. The last great conductor of the Wagnerian school is almost universally recognised as Furtwängler and he died nearly seventy years ago. I fear this will be like virtually every hip recording of Beethoven where they religiously play near the tempo indications of a deaf man with no fluidity of tempo while ignoring this same deaf man said: "my tempo indications are only valid for the first few bars"; or the pianists playing note-perfect but ultimately dry renditions of Beethoven's piano sonatas on fortepianos and thereby claiming to be closer in "authenticity" to a man who said "to make a mistake is unimportant; to play without emotion is inexcusable" than Artur Schnabel; or the legions of performers claiming using larger forces, that Baroque or Classical composers often excplictly stated in preserved letters that they'd prefer, is inauthentic due to the fact the majority of the performances of the time were technically limited. I don't have a burning desire to hear a horn that sounded like the one Wagner wrote for, but I do have a burning desire to hear a performance from a man so passionate about the music that he would seize the baton in a live performance and slow the tempo down to a point where the singers could barely breathe because he felt that the music, in that moment, absolutely, positively, and emotionally, demanded it.

In other words, I fear they will get the flutes and trumpets right, but won't bother with the things I would (personally, as a listener, in my opinion, batteries not included, usage may vary) like to hear.

As another thought, we have Wagner recordings from the early 1900s which isn't too long after the master died. How "inauthentic" could things have gotten in that short period?

 

A beautiful post with which I couldn't agree more.

 

I could have saved myself the trouble of writing my posts and researching more about this project. No one is interested. Instead, I only read a lot of prejudices against HIP.

I should not have signed up for this forum. But as we all know, you learn from your mistakes.

Goodbye.

 

It isn't a prejudice against historically informed practice, but a desire to avoid reductionism, to maintain a larger perspective on the matter of "authenticity," and even to question whether an "authentic" Ring, assuming it could be achieved (which it can't), would accord with Wagner's wishes. A few 19th-century instruments will not take us far in resolving these issues.

 

There have been earlier attempts at "period Wagner".

- Hartmut Haenchen's live Ring for De Nederlandse Opera (available on dvd and SACD)

Excerpt from Fanfare review of this 13 SACD-set =>
"Haenchen's cycle is based on the Neue Richard-Wagner-Gesamtausgabe, but the conductor and his collaborators at The Netherlands Opera went well beyond that, making a serious effort to get at the nature of the first performances, and even at Wagner's unrealized intentions. Extensive notes taken by the composer's Bayreuth assistants in 1876-especially Heinrich Porges, but also Felix Mottl, Hermann Levi, and Julius Kniese-were scrutinized to inform these performances. Wagner made changes to pitches, rhythms, and texts at rehearsals and gave copious instructions regarding tempo, inflection, and other interpretative matters. "

- There's also Marc Minkowski's period Dutchman (conducting his "Musiciens du Louvre")

 

News on Nagano's Wagner project =>

This january he will team up with Bayreuth University in order to find out how artists of the 21st century can sing the "Ring of the Nibelung" -within the framework of historically informed performances.

full article (with more info) => https://ubtaktuell.uni-bayreuth.de/kent-nagano-and-fimt-d72f334a4e2c56c1

Nagano's first Wagner-Lesarten concert is scheduled in Köln on febr. 7th.
https://www.koelner-philharmonie.de/en/programm/wagner-lesarten/409

 

For me, the striking parts of the foregoing are:

'In comparison to the sound recordings made around 1900 - which represent a historical intermediate step to today's Wagnerian singing - as many aspects of historical performance practice as possible are to be reconstructed and made usable as material for a performance today.'

'The starting point for the research is the fimt project "Voice", which, among other things, dealt extensively with the singer Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient (1804 to 1860). The extreme modes of the singing voice (speaking, whispering, shouting) often used by Schröder-Devrient are used as a basis, as well as contemporary singing and acting schools that Wagner considered important.'

I have to wonder in what sense the manner of singing Wagner in 1900 was "intermediate" between the manner of 1876 (when the Ring premiered) and the manner of 2020. From 1876 to 1900 is 24 years. From 1900 to 2020 is 120. That gives us an oddly placed "intermediate." Moreover, what is the measure of comparison, and what is the historical evidence? The article mentions only Wilhelmine Schroeder- Devrient, whom Beethoven was able to hear (or at least see) as Leonore in his Fidelio and who in 1876 was already dead 16 years. We're further told that certain extreme vocal effects ("speaking, whispering, shouting") she supposedly employed are to be studied as a "basis" for exploring historical singing styles supposedly relevant to performing the Ring in an authentic manner.

I don't know about you, but all of this scares the bejeezus out of me. Frida Leider and Friedrich Schorr, watch out!

 

I’m sorry. This strikes me as some academic mince aimed purely at milking some university/college/cash-cow with no discernible use. Academics with too much time on their hands. Give me a break!! Or more colloquially in my neck of the woods - gies peace! Google it,

 

I'm sorry. This strikes me as some academic mince aimed purely at milking some university/college/cash-cow with no discernible use. Academics with too much time on their hands. Give me a break!! Or more colloquially in my neck of the woods - gies peace! Google it,

I gather it's a slightly milder dismissal than "Awa an bile yer heid."

 

In fifty years we'll have HIP Puccini. Cesira Ferrani will be seen as intermediary between original performance practice and Franco Fagioli who will have become a renowned Mimi.

 

At least we have recordings to tell us what HIP Puccini is. We don't have to theorize about Puccini's opinion of people "speaking, shouting and whispering" instead of singing.

 

Experts or specialists - people who know more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about nothing!!

 

This is the website of Wagner-Lesarten; Richard Wagner's »The Ring of the Nibelung« in historical performance practice. - - a scientific-artistic project by Kent Nagano, Concerto Köln and the Kunststiftung NRW.
site => https://wagner-lesarten.de/project.html

So far five lectures are available to watch on this site :

- "Whoever cannot distinguish between g and ch is an un-German barbarian ... ".
- Richard Wagner and the pronunciation of (sung) German in the 19th century
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-wagner-and-pronounciation.html

- Expressivity in the »Valkyrie«. An analysis of contemporary listening habits.
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/expressivity-in-the-valkyrie.html

- Richard Wagner: »On [my] conducting« (1869) - From beginner to interpretive conductor.
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-on-my-conducting-1869.html

- On the woodwinds, their instruments and the performance practice of the 1876 Bayreuth Festival.
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-the-woodwinds-and-performance-practices.html

- »The scenery on which the eyes of the Master had reposed«
- Wagner's "Gesamtkunstwerk" with historically informed staging practices?
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-Staging-Practices.html

 

The Ring on period instruments

Excerpt:

From the first low rumble, it is clear that Wagnerian period instruments offer a glimpse of another universe. Gut strings and a background in historical performance mean a string sound that is more woody, more mellow, and infinitely more articulate than today's. Players accustomed to the precise articulation of baroque music bring a refreshing clarity to the attack of individual notes. It is as if a string of shapeless vowels have suddenly acquired consonants, making language from what used to be just sound. The gut also changes the implications of playing without vibrato - instead of bare and slightly shrill, as it can be with metal-wound strings, it is soft and warm.

 

The Ring on period instruments

Excerpt: "It is as if a string of shapeless vowels have suddenly acquired consonants, making language from what used to be just sound."

So, let me get this straight... the Wagner we're used to is a string of shapeless vowels, but gut strings make language out of them? Or it's merely "as if" that is happening?

Even more entertaining are these remarks:

"Nagano's direction is crystal clear and exquisitely structured. Sometimes you yearn for a little more unfettered wildness, a little more metric freedom, a little less sobriety; but you can get those things elsewhere."

"The Rhinemaidens seem about to break into the Village People's YMCA; they are also the ones who make the most use of a kind of melodramatic speech used to replace song, which sounds more like Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and sends the audience into titters."

I would point out that at the Bayreuth premiere of the Ring in 1876, the great (and then very young) Lilli Lehmann sang Woglinde, Ortlinde and the woodbird, and that in 1882 Wagner had her lead the flowermaidens in Parsifal. If you can conceive of the composer asking her to produce anything remotely resembling Sprechstimme in any of that music, you are far more imaginative (and possibly inebriated) than I.

 

Woodduck - VERY fine, and thanks for remembering "another" of the Lehmann's - Ms. Lilli ... as we know the contributions of the "other" Lehmann ... Lotte, herself, in her indelible ways. Well, Good God, is there TRULY historically-informed Ring cycle, of the BEST, of all? I'm not a lawyer, but could make a CASE for Lilli, or Lotte ... Lehmann ... or Schorr, or Baklanoff, or Varnay/Rysanek of certain female voices .... and is there any need to mention - Flagstad, Melchior, Helen Traubel or others?

 

There have been some cognitive dissonances within the HIP movement, right? On one hand, there are endless futile academic attempts at guessing what Handel's and Mozart's music might have sounded like. On the other hand, we have solid evidence of how singers who worked directly with Verdi, Wagner, Massenet, Strauss, and Puccini actually sounded like, and no one attempt to study and mimic their "correct" style. Aren't Verdi, Wagner, Massenet, Strauss, and Puccini "historical"? How come the current singing style is so tasteless and generic and bears no resemblance to the singers of the golden age?

Back to conducting. I wonder if these "period instruments" dudes listened to Karl Muck at all.

 

I think the issue is more with the orchestra: use of period instruments and how they are set-up, articulation, bowing, tempi, and other interpretive aspects and not so much with the singers.