{"id":552,"date":"2014-07-17T22:33:12","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T02:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=552"},"modified":"2014-07-17T22:33:12","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T02:33:12","slug":"remembering-artur-bodanzky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2014\/07\/remembering-artur-bodanzky.html","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Artur Bodanzky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"artur-bodanzky\"<\/a>
\nSony’s 25-CD set “Wagner at the Met: Legendary Performances” reminds us that when the Metropolitan Opera was a great Wagner house — how times have changed! — it was also a permanent home to great conductors. My “Remembering Artur Bodanzky,” in the current issue of Barry Millington’s excellent Wagner Journal<\/em>, expounds:<\/p>\n

An abundance of evidence \u2013 written and recorded \u2013 suggests that from 1885 to 1939 the world\u2019s foremost Wagner house, judged solely by the caliber of musical performance, was the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. In Europe, there were companies that staged Wagner more painstakingly or progressively. But none could compete with the Met with regard to singing, conducting, and orchestral support.<\/p>\n

The caliber of Wagner singing in New York during the half century in question is a phenomenon well known and much described. Initially, the resident German ensemble included Marianne Brandt, Lilli Lehmann, and Albert Niemann \u2013 great singing actors stolen from German companies. Later, Jean de Rezske \u2013 who proved that Tristan could be beautifully vocalized — and Olive Fremstad \u2013 the closest equivalent to a Wagnerian Callas \u2013 reigned at the Met. After that came Friedrich Schorr, Lauritz Melchior, Kirsten Flagstad. This was before the advent of air travel; these artists stayed put in New York. <\/p>\n

But even more crucial \u2013 and far less acknowledged \u2013 is that the Met was a conductor\u2019s house with a Wagner lineage comprising Anton Seidl, Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini, and Artur Bodanzky. That Bodanzky is not normally grouped in such company is the reason for this article. His Wagner broadcast recordings were once sidelined by commercial studio products. No longer: you can readily hear Bodanzky\u2019s Wagner on youtube, on Naxos, and on a new 25-CD Sony box of \u201cWagner at the Met: Legendary Performances from The Metropolitan Opera\u201d including New York Bodanzky performances of Siegfried<\/em> (Jan. 30, 1937), Tristan und Isolde<\/em> (April 16, 1938), and G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung<\/em> (Jan. 11, 1936). All you have to do is listen.<\/p>\n

But first, backing up: it must be remembered that, following an inaugural season of Italian and French opera that broke the bank, the Met began as a German-language house. The seven seasons from 1884 to 1891 were wholly German; it was the only language sung, and the vast majority of the singing was of Wagner. As of 1885, the presiding conductor, Anton Seidl, was a Wagner prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of genius. That from 1872 to 1878 Seidl lived at Wahnfried \u2013 in his own room, as a virtual member of the family — has somehow escaped Wagner biographers. He was Wagner\u2019s boy, and when Wagner sent him out into the world he testified that Seidl was a young man he wholly trusted to do justice to the Ring, Tristan<\/em>, and Die Meistersinger.<\/em> All accounts of Seidl conducting Wagner register his close allegiance to Wagner\u2019s own precepts \u2013 and his overwhelming impact in the pit. <\/p>\n

When Mahler became the Met\u2019s chief purveyer of Wagner in 1908, that he was found worthy of comparison with Seidl was the highest possible praise. Compared to Seidl, Mahler seemed more analytical, less prone to the weight and Innigkeit later associated with Furtw\u00e4ngler. Mahler and his wife were amazed by the lustrous voices at the Met, compared what Mahler had in Vienna. That Mahler did not complain about the Met orchestra (as he did about the New York Philharmonic and New York Symphony) speaks volumes.<\/p>\n

Toscanini\u2019s Wagner at the Met, from 1908 to 1915, was at first less highly regarded \u2013 but his intense mastery and advocacy were never in doubt. Toscanini\u2019s Wagner sound was found more Italianate than that of his predecessors, and his lyric predilection \u2013 for \u201csinging\u201d sonic surfaces \u2013 was experienced as something new in the Wagner repertoire. <\/p>\n

And so to Bodanzky. He was born in Vienna in 1877. He studied composition with Alexander von Zemlinsky. He was an assistant to Mahler at the Vienna Opera, and was also closely associated with Busoni (who recommended him to Toscanini when Toscanini left New York in 1915). He was head of the German wing at the Met from 1915 until his death in 1939. The Mahler and Busoni links are suggestive. Bodanzky\u2019s Met broadcasts do not disclose a \u201cGermanic\u201d Wagner conductor in the Wagner-Seidl-Furtw\u00e4ngler mold. The massive elemental groundswell is not his interpretive medium. Rather, he favors the highest possible surface intensity. He likes brisk tempos, subito dynamics, and sharp attacks. More than responsive, his orchestra is indescribably hot. James Huneker \u2013 a legendary name among early twentieth century New York critics — wrote: \u201cNo living conductor has the fiery temperament of Bodanzky save Arturo Toscanini.\u201d <\/p>\n

It bears stressing that Bodanzky\u2019s Met orchestra was predominantly Italian \u2013 a Toscanini legacy. The house\u2019s other principal conductor, presiding over the Italian wing, was Ettore Panizza \u2013 a name as forgotten as Bodanzky\u2019s, and as important. Panizza was a conductor in the Toscanini mold, albeit predisposed to a more flexible pulse. To hear his Met broadcasts of Verdi is to hear both Panizza and the Met orchestra in their element. There is no greater recorded operatic performance than Panizza\u2019s New York Otello<\/em> of Feb. 12, 1938, with Giovanni Martinelli, Elisabeth Rethberg, and Lawrence Tibbett. Martinelli and Tibbett are iconic in their roles. And the orchestra is a powderkeg of inflammatory virtuosity, an instrument unlike any to be heard today. (Panizza, who had conducted in Milan and Vienna, called his Met orchestra \u201cas fine a theater orchestra as I have seen in the world.\u201d) The same orchestra, in the 1938 Tristan<\/em> under Bodanzky\u2019s baton, delivers the most gripping act one Prelude I have ever experienced (I am not alone in this opinion). The sound is Italian: keenly focused singing from the strings, laced with portamento; forward timpani and brass (bright trumpets). Bodanzky begins very slowly (the total timing is 11:38 \u2013 slow), with huge allargandos and agogics, but there is no languor in his reading. It begins burning hot, and in an iron grip grows hotter still. The gradual acceleration is masterfully gauged. The climax is titanic \u2013 even a good performance of the opera could only be anti-climactic after such a draining preamble. <\/p>\n

But the Bodanzky performance to hear first is Siegfried. <\/em>This is not only the most fulfilling recorded performance of this opera that I know; it is the only musically fulfilling Siegfried I have ever encountered. To begin with, the scherzando m\u00e9tier of acts one and two suits Bodanzky to perfection. And, of course, there is Melchior \u2013 he can sing the title role, first to last. The young Flagstad makes her own the sunburst of Br\u00fcnnhilde\u2019s awakening. Schorr has always seemed to me a somewhat stolid singer \u2013 but where today can one find a Wanderer of comparable vocal heft and stability? The others \u2013 Mime (Karl Laufk\u00f6tter), Alberich (Eduard Habich), Erda (Kerstin Thorborg), even the Forest Bird (Stella Andreva) \u2013 are uniformly potent. The diction throughout is exemplary; words are sung, not swallowed. <\/p>\n

Bodanzky\u2019s act one is predominantly fleet. Mime and Siegfried scamper in time, prodded by hairtrigger accents and sforzatos in the pit. Where Siegfried assimilates his mother\u2019s death, Bodanzky drops his reins and Melchior trims his big tenor to a whisper, shading the words with pangs of incredulous grief. When the last scene is attained, the pacing of the act acquires an unanticipated breadth. Buttressed by the incredible rasp and bite of Bodanzky\u2019s low strings, Melchior just pours it on. I cannot imagine a more exultant rendition of the forging song. In act two, Bodanzky\u2019s intermittent climaxes \u2013 the crest of the Wanderer\/Alberich confrontation; the Wanderer\u2019s apocalyptic exit \u2013 are so tremendous they risk pre-empting the act\u2019s closing surge. But when this comes, Bodanzky\u2019s velocity (the passage cannot be taken any faster or more brilliantly) and Melchior\u2019s vocal refulgence clinch Siegfried\u2019s delight and excitement. The surpassing moment of this performance, however, is unquestionably Br\u00fcnnhilde\u2019s Awakening. Here, the surging melos of Bodanzky\u2019s strings drives a climax made uncanny by the knife-thrust of the epochal chords preceding \u201cHeil dir, Sonne!\u201d \u2013 chords typically delivered via \u201csoft\u201d attacks from the bottom up. Then Flagstad: a lava flow. And then Melchior. Bodanzky accelerates their duet toward a torrential cadence. <\/p>\n

If Bodanzky is mainly remembered for anything these days, it is for inflicting cuts on Wagner. It must be recalled that Wagner was abridged in New York even by Seidl \u2013 or, rather, especially by Seidl, because he was a sensitive, sensible man: the works were new and most in the audience knew no German. (Mahler, by comparison, aspired to give Wagner uncut in New York \u2013 thinking of himself and the composer, but not of his audience.) Bodanzky trimmed Wagner not because he was lazy or obtuse; he was being considerate to others. That said, the Bodanzky\u2019s cuts are far less extensive than Seidl\u2019s had been. His Siegfried is uncut through acts one and two. The third act is missing part of the Siegfried-Wanderer scene, and part of the final duet \u2013 cuts that truncate the psychological trajectory of the latter scene especially. <\/p>\n

With regard to cuts, the Bodanzky Tristan<\/em> is another case; the score is jettisoned by 13 per cent. Act one is complete. But the second act duet is snipped twice \u2013 so that it builds too soon. Marke\u2019s speech is abridged \u2013 so that it becomes more eruptive, less depressive. Act three, with four cuts, feels compressed \u2013 and so does the opera as a whole. And yet this broadcast recording is an essential point of reference in the history of Wagner in performance. Others will disagree, but to my ears Flagstad is not a complete Isolde. The richness, evenness, and stamina of her Ur-soprano are unsurpassable; and the part has been assiduously studied. But she cannot really inhabit Isolde\u2019s act one rage, scorn, and hopelessness. It falls to Bodanzky to supply the music\u2019s whipping fury; the temper and virtuosity of his big orchestra, its agility at the swiftest speeds, are beyond praise.<\/p>\n

The performance congeals in act two, with Flagstad partnered by Melchior. Here the sheer amplitude of the two voices, the rapturous range and acute control of phrasing and dynamics (impressively captured on Sony\u2019s transfer) beggar description. The singing portamentos of the orchestra\u2019s strings seamlessly bind the vocal episodes. Bondanzky finds the long line of the love duet and makes it wondrously supple and strong. For Brang\u00e4ne\u2019s warning, he furnishes a sonic carpet whose slow-motion tension-and-release trajectory grips Karin Branzell as surely as it does the afternoon\u2019s enthralled auditors. The duet\u2019s climax takes possession of every participant; I have never heard a more desperate delivery of Kurwenal\u2019s \u201cRette dich, Tristan!\u201d than that of Julius Huehn on this charged occasion. In short: this Tristan act two documents an ideal toward which present-day performances cannot plausibly aspire. If I were to cite a single, peak passage, it would be Tristan\u2019s \u201cO K\u00f6nig.\u201d Melchior\u2019s uncanny rendering of this great address \u2013 first to Marke, then Isolde \u2013 persuades that he has glimpsed what we cannot. It would take a Fremstad or Lilli Lehmann to craft a suitably visionary rejoinder; Flagstad isn\u2019t up to it. But, miraculously, the Met has supplied a Melot \u2013 Arnold Gabor \u2013 who can stand his ground with Melchior, and also, in Emanuel List, a superior Marke. Bodanzky\u2019s band drops the curtain with a staccato fury that knows no answer.<\/p>\n

Wagner once instructed Albert Niemann \u2013 the supreme Tristan of another era \u2013 to sound more fatigued singing Tannh\u00e4user\u2019s Rome Narrative. As the comatose Tristan in act three of our 1938 broadcast, Melchior evinces an elemental weariness. Equally convincing are the shouted, curdled tones with which he curses the lovers\u2019 fatal drink; or the heartbreak of his hallucinatory yearning; or the manic ecstasy yielding the manic dissolution with which Tristan expires. In the Liebestod, Flagstad\u2019s super-human instrument, piloted by Bodanzky\u2019s heaving orchestra, impacts with primordial force.<\/p>\n

Bodanzky\u2019 1936 G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung <\/em>is chiefly notable for Melchior\u2019s piercing interpretation of Siegfried\u2019s Death and for his prodigious high C earlier in the third act; the performance as a whole feels hyper-active (but then so is this opera). More remarkable \u2013 but not in Sony\u2019s box \u2013 are Bodanzky Met broadcasts of Das Rheingold <\/em> and Die Meistersinger<\/em>. Sadly, there exists no readily available Bodanzky broadcast of Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em>. Sony here supplies a performance (with Flagstad and Melchior) led by Erich Leinsdorf, whose emergence as Bodanzky\u2019s successor at the head of the Met\u2019s German wing marked the collapse of the Seidl-Mahler-Toscanini-Bodanzky lineage. Leindorf\u2019s Wagner, of which this Feb. 17, 1940, Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em> is a fair example, was ever frigid and meticulous; it possessed nothing like the originality and passion of Bodanzky\u2019s readings. Leinsdorf remained on and off the Met\u2019s conducting roster for more than four decades. After Bodanzsky\u2019s death in 1939, and Panizza\u2019s 1942 departure, the company enjoyed no sustained musical leadership, whether German or Italian, until the 1970s advent of James Levin as principal conductor and then music direcor. Though Levine has his fervent admirers, to my ears he is no Bodanzky and no Panizza. And his orchestra, while much better than what he inherited, is a less special instrument than the virtuoso Italian ensemble Bodanzky and Panizza once commanded and maintained.<\/p>\n

My own first in-person experience of Wagner at the Met was a 1962 Die Meistersinger <\/em>led by Joseph Rosenstock. I was 13 and knew the Prelude from my stirring Toscanini recording. To my surprise, a lumpy sonic pastiche emanated from the pit. This was during the reign of Rudolph Bing (1950-1972), who frankly disliked Wagner. Except for a few Rheingold<\/em> and Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em> performances led by Herbert von Karajan, the Met orchestra in these years could not be expected to produce the Wagner sounds I knew from LPs. It more than bears mentioning that it was Rosenstock who was slated to replace Bodanzky in 1929, when the latter decided to leave the Met after 13 busy seasons. Rosenstock conducted six times, after which Bodanzky was reinstated. It is tempting to speculate what new turn his career might otherwise have taken. He was for instance a known Mahlerite whose New York concert performances included Das Lied von der Erde<\/em>. But Rosenstock\u2019s ascent had to await another, less momentous era of Wagner at the Met.<\/p>\n

P.S. \u2013 After writing this piece, I shared with my wife the 1938 Bodanzky Tristan<\/em>, act two. When the music ended, her first comment was to ask: \u201cWhat orchestra was that?\u201d When I told her, she was properly incredulous. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sony’s 25-CD set “Wagner at the Met: Legendary Performances” reminds us that when the Metropolitan Opera was a great Wagner house — how times have changed! — it was also a permanent home to great conductors. My “Remembering Artur Bodanzky,” in the current issue of Barry Millington’s excellent Wagner Journal, expounds: An abundance of evidence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-8U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}