Angyl's blog

Some articles!

- The Ring and Rings.  A New Yorker piece on Tolkien's Ring, Wagner's Ring, myth, and music.

- Wilhelm Furtwängler: Genius Forged in the Cauldron of War.  A really long and very interesting article on the conductor behind the Wagner recordings (Ring & Tristan) that have most moved me.  His quixotic style really stands out and excites me at a spiritual level.  Hans pointed out to me that there's another edition reputed to be of better audio quality.

- Reviews and rankings of various renditions of Wagner's Ring Cycle.  Resources like this have been very useful to me.  There's a lot of general agreement amongst vocal Wagnerites about which constitute the top tier renditions, and by comparing my personal ranking opinions as I work through them with the far-more-studied-than I reviewers, I'm able to figure out which school of opinion I tend to fall into, and can also then sometimes derive words for what I know only as emotions and sensations of the spirit.

- I'm currently working through the Boulez Bayreuth Ring Cycle, which features absolutely the best acting I've seen in a Ring yet.  This may be related to the fact that the director hails from a theatre rather than Opera background, a la Baz Lhurmann's Boheme.  The Barenboim Ring Cycle will hopefully be the next one we check out.

- I'm also looking to explore Krauss.  Since I have heard neither Parsifal nor Krauss, I may start with the pairing thereof.

- It's a year and a half away, but I'm already foaming with excitement over seeing my Opera-crush Greer Grimsley play Wotan in Seattle's 2009 Ring

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I lent my copy of Tristan und Isolde to Hans, explaining that while I didn't have words for what it was I liked, there was some particular quality to that production that caused me to feel very involved in the music and emotions and always caused that recording to stand out to me.  He focused in on the conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler.  This fellow, it turns out, is interesting for a number of reasons.  It seems he was very kinetic, but not very articulate at all - in fact, the more I read what other people had to say about him, the more he sounds like an Aspie.  (If so, his willingness to stay in Germany makes a lot more sense - there seemed to be a certain rational detachment required in those who stayed despite opposed morality, even if they did so in attempt to help embedded Jews escape, as his widow claimed he did.)

When conducting, he flailed about, largely expressionless of the face, often off the beat, throwing his entire body into a twitching, convulsive expression of some deeper emotional movement only he could feel, that he was desperately trying to breathe to his orchestra through his body.  His players loved him - you don't have to guess, you can look at their faces in the videos, or listen to the sheer magnificence of the recordings of his concerts, and you can tell he's infusing them with a great holy fire.  It's almost like he trusts them to organically handle certain things that other conductors are sticklers for - consider Toscanini's metronome-like presentation and crisp precision in contrast.  Furtwangler's movements are about intensity and emotion, about building and carrying the story, and leaving his people to handle the details underneath - very rarely do you see his body insist to any of the musicians "do this bit this way in precise detail", rather, he leads everyone collectively in broad sweeping arcs punctuated by energetic explosions of emphasis.

Here's s YouTube of him conducting Meistersinger in 1942, so you can see what I'm talking about here.  Watch how the musicians light up like a blaze when he focuses on them, and how gentle his touch is - he's directing, not micromanaging:

Such a profound departure and such a great impact did he make, that he became a verb.  Speaking approvingly of his successor, Daniel Barenboim, Furtwangler's widow said, "Er furtwänglert." ("He furtwänglers.")

Bonus Material:
- Furtwangler Society recommended recordings
- Don Giovanni - Commendatore scene
- Conducting Flagstad in Gotterdammerung
- Aww heck, you can search YouTube as well as I can, huh?

11 Home Again

My favorite (now defunct) jam band ever is an obscure but talented and respected group from New York with music in their blood known as God Street Wine.  Among their songs, it is particularly the heart-tweaking ballads sung by Aaron's powerful voice rock my gypsy soul.  This track is "Home Again", from their very first album, "Bag", and also from their very last show ever.

* I hear that chatty short frontman Lo Faber, always the solid writing talent behind the band. is writing rock operas these days.  I should check it out.