Some of you may be familiar with a phenomenon most often encountered in sharks and rays called “tonic immobility.” You flip the critter on its back and stroke it’s belly, and it lapses into a trance that can last as long as fifteen minutes. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that this happens to be approximately the length of the prelude to Parsifal, and that is precisely the effect the music usually has on me. After two measures, unless the performances is astoundingly captivating, I will have no memory of anything more until the piece ends. Rosbaud’s version, tasteful and musical, even elegant, as always with this artist, didn’t keep me awake. It took me about six days to get through it.
In fact, Rosbaud conducted very little Wagner. It wasn’t his glass of schnapps, as it were. Not that his ideas aren’t interesting. Rienzi has to be the most graceful, least vulgar performance on disc–wholly enjoyable. The Flying Dutchman, watery horns aside, features an unusual treatment of the ending, keeping the music very much in “salvation” mode. The Lohengrin Act One Prelude is aptly luminous, but that to Act III lacks oomph. Similarly, the orgy at the center of the Tannhäuser Overture just isn’t steamy enough to be convincing, while the Prelude to Act III of Meistersinger passes by without much to notice (but then, it’s pretty dull music to begin with).
The sonics, fair to middling mono, don’t get in the way of the performances, and Rosbaud’s work has such musical integrity that you want to like it more than you actually do. But in Wagner especially, I miss the sleaze. It’s part of the fun.
