WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING
BAYREUTH
WAGNER
THE RING
PIANOS
PROJECT I
GARBEN
HOPPE
Records
Revolutionary.
„Wagner, the magician, has made the orchestra disappear.“ (Georg Solti)
However, this recording goes one step further than the master, with his unusual
stage design in Bayreuth.
With the removal of „orchestral and vocal commotion“ (Carlos Kleiber, in the
studio during the mixing of his TRISTAN recording), the listener is able to hear
the very essence of the work, which suddenly has „much more of an inward
effect “ (CK). Here, in the RING PIANOS PROJECT, the music is once again liberated from the effects of orchestration. „The result is uncanny, drawing you in
with a seemingly magical series of harmonies and notes to produce a deeper
and more intense experience“ (Klaus Hiemann, Studio Engineer for Carlos
Kleiber, speaking about this recording).
Thanks to Cord Garben and Thomas Hoppe for the tour de force. Thanks to
Steingraeber for the concert grands; Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner were not
mistaken. Thanks to our puristic sound engineer Johannes Müller and mastering guru Christoph Stickel, on behalf of all audiophile Wagnerites. Thanks
to Dynaudio for the monitors, on which only true gold glitters. And thanks to
everyone who who will fall for this recording in Wagner Year 2013. Never before
has there been a Ring like this.
See, he smiles in the shining light.
Wilfried Ehrenholz and Jan Geschke, Hamburg, Producers
Perfectly single and simple.
„In the Nibelung‘s Ring we find an enormous range of emotions, from the deepest
sorrow, pain and despair to joy, wonder and elevated pride, from fear and anxiety
to self-confidence and firmness, from arrogance to heroism, from hate and rage
to rapture and ecstasy, from betrayal, treachery and falseness to compassion,
tenderness, love and total self-sacrifice.
Its dramatic moments lie quite outside the consciousness of people whose joys
and sorrows are all domestic and personal, and whose religions and political
ideas are purely conventional and superstitious. To them it is a struggle between
half a dozen fairytale personages for a ring, involving hours of scolding and
cheating, and one long scene in a dark gruesome mine, with gloomy, ugly music,
and not a glimpse of a handsome young man or pretty woman.
Only those of wider consciousness can follow it breathlessly, seeing in it the whole tragedy of human history and the whole horror of the dilemmas from which the
world is shrinking today.
Now to be devoted to Wagner merely as a dog is devoted to his master, sharing
a few elementary ideas, appetites and emotions with him, and, for the rest,
reverencing his superiority without understanding it, is no true Wagnerism.
The Ring music is perfectly single and simple. It is the adept musician of the old
school who has everything to unlearn.“
George Bernard Shaw, Ayot St. Lawrence, 1898
Occupy Wagner.
„See there, there stream the legions from the factories; they‘ve made and
fashioned lordly stuffs, themselves and children, they are naked, frozen, hungry;
for not to them belongs the fruit of all their labour, but to the rich and mighty one
who calls men and the earth his own.
Annulled be the fancy that makes man bond-slave to his handiwork, to property.
Man‘s highest good is his fashioning force, the fount whence springs all happiness forever; and not in the created. (..)
I will destroy this order of things, that cuts enjoyment off from labour, makes
labour a load, enjoyment a vice, makes one man wretched through want, another
through overflow...”
Richard Wagner, co-editor of “The Revolution”, April 8, 1849, Dresden
On May 9, Wagner was forced to flee Dresden, together with the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, among others. In Chemnitz, Bakunin and two of Wagner‘s
fugitive friends were taken prison while they slept; Wagner escaped to Weimar.
Along with others, Bakunin was condemned to death, but was pardoned and
spent years in imprisonment. Wagner remained in exile for 12 years, during
which time he worked on the RING.
Apocalypse, now.
The Valkyrie
The Rhinegold
1 Prelude
ACT I
6 I. Curtain, prelude (thunderstorm)
2 1. Scene (Alberich, Rhinemaidens) The gold lies on the riverbed. The
Rhine maidens tease each other, a symbol of peace and the riches of
nature. The dwarf Alberich looks on greedily. The maidens make fun of him
until he seizes an opportunity to steal the gold.
7 3. Scene (Siegmund and Sieglinde) Siegmund is pursued through the
forest in the thunderstorm. He takes shelter in Hunding‘s house. He feels
a deep attraction to Hunding‘s wife Sieglinde. When they realise they are
brother and sister, they burn with mutual love. Siegfried is conceived.
3 2. Scene (Gods and giants) The giants demand in vain that Wotan pay
them for building the castle for the gods. Wotan plans to steal Alberich‘s
gold to pay the giants. Loge philosophises about love and power. Fricka,
Wotan‘s wife, despairs about his weakness, constant unfaithfulness and
megalomania, despite the fact that it was she who encouraged him to build
the castle.
ACT II 8 Curtain, prelude The prelude depicts the pair‘s desperation in view of the
imminent duel with Hunding, in which Brünnhilde helps Siegmund, against
Wotan‘s orders.
4 3. Scene (Nibelheim) In Nibelheim, the dwarves slave under Alberich‘s whip.
With Loge‘s help, Wotan steals the treasure. He uses it to pay the giants, and
his kidnapped daughter Freia is free.
5 4. Scene (The gods move into Valhalla) In apparent peace, the
gods move proudly into the sumptuous castle.
9 4. Scene (death announcement) Death announcement. Brünnhilde to
Siegmund: Whoever looks on me bids farewell to the flame of life. Wotan
steps in and, at Fricka‘s request, helps Hunding to victory.
ACT III 10 Curtain, prelude (The Valkyries) The Valkyries ride furiously. They transport
the dead heroes to Valhalla. In extreme agitation, they learn that Wotan has
condemned their sister Brünnhilde.
11 Scene (Wotan‘s departure. Fire magic) Wotan‘s departure and fire magic.
In great inner turmoil, Wotan strips his favourite daughter Brünnhilde of her
immortality. He encloses her in a ring of fire, until she is freed by her worthy
hero.
Back to the source.
The works of great symphonic literature were developed by their composers in
the notation from a nucleus of two or three systems: piano score (2 note systems) and short score (3 to 4) contain the first structuring of the musical ideas.
Here, themes and motifs are developed and their course determined. At this
point, the composer already has an idea of the orchestral instrument to which
he will allocate each musical component, leading to the final overall sound in the
orchestration process.
Even one page of a large Wagner score, which may contain up to 30 note systems, started out as just a few staves.
When a director or composer familiar with the craft decides to „arrange“ scores
from great Wagnerian musical dramas for the piano, he reverses this development process: now it is about recreating the sounds with only the piano. Thus,
where there might seem to be a disadvantage for the listener, because of a lack
of sounds from the instruments of the orchestra, there is in fact an advantage:
by reducing the sounds available to only those of the piano, the listener is able to
directly hear the structure of the work and its harmonic grammar. Thanks to this
deeper insight into the inner workings of the music, the next time the listener falls
under its spell in the theatre, he or she will hear it with different ears.
Cord Garben, Hamburg
Cord Garben
Born in Bad Homburg in 1943. Studied piano and conducting at the Academy of
Music in Hanover. Répétiteur at the Staatstheater in Lower Saxony.
Specialises in song accompaniment. Concerts and recordings with Edith
Mathis, Anne Sophie v. Otter, Brigitte Fassbaender, Peter Schreier, Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau, Bernd Weikl and Kurt Moll, among others. Accompaniment to
the complete song recordings of Alexander Zemlinsky and Hector Berlioz and
to the songs and ballads of Carl Loewe (21 CDs, finished in 2005). Deutscher
Schallplattenpreis, French Minister of Culture prize for the best cultural initiative,
Grand Prix Franz Liszt Budapest, seven Grammy Awards as producer. Key
achievements during his time at Deutsche Grammophon included the work with
Herbert v. Karajan, Mstislav Rostropovich, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Arturo
Benedetti Michelangeli. As Director of Vocal Productions, he was responsible for
all vocal productions. Some of the main highlights in this area were the recordings
at the New York MET under James Levine (including Wagner‘s RING).
As conductor, Cord Garben has worked with, among others, the NDR Symphony
Orchestra (tours and CDs with Benedetti Michelangeli), the Tokyo Philharmonic
Orchestra (Wagner‘s ”Tannhäuser“ in 2001), the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo,
NDR Radiophilharmonie, and Radio Symphony Orchestra Warsaw. In 2001, Cord
Garben became President of the Johannes-Brahms-Gesellschaft, Hamburg and
an Honorary Member of the International Carl-Loewe-Gesellschaft.
Thomas Hoppe
Born in Bad Kreuznach. Studied with Agathe Wanek in Mainz and Lee Luvisi
in the USA. At the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, he specialised
in song and instrumental accompaniment. For many years, Hoppe was studio
accompanist for Dorothy Delay and Itzhak Perlman at the Juilliard School.
Between 2001 and 2004, he worked as a faculty member on the Perlman Music
Program at the personal invitation of the violinist. Hoppe performs in concerts
in the USA and Europe as piano accompanist to, among others, Itzhak Perlman,
Joshua Bell, Antje Weithaas, Marie-Luise Neunecker, Alban Gerhardt, Jens Peter
Mainz, Mihaela Martin and Frans Helmerson.
As a member of the ATOS Trio, he won the Deutscher Musik Wettbewerb in 2004, the
Schubert Wettbewerb in Graz in 2006, and the renowned Melbourne International
Chamber Music Competition and the North American Kalichstein-Laredo-RobinsonAward in 2007. In 2009, the ATOS Trio was named New Generation Artists by BBC
London. The musicians regularly perform in concerts in Europe, the USA and Australia
in legendary venues such as London‘s Wigmore Hall, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the
Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Kennedy Center in Washington and Carnegie
Hall in New York. Hoppe regularly works as official piano accompanist in various
international competitions (ARD Munich, Queen Elizabeth Brussels, Joseph Joachim
Hanover). He has held master classes in Chile (Frutillar Music Festival), Bulgaria
(Varna), Michigan (Gilmore Festival), Shanghai (Conservatory), Kentucky, Arizona
and New York City, Melbourne, Sydney and Berlin. He is a chamber music tutor at the
Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic and for the Staatsoper in Berlin, and is
Artistic Associate at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler in Berlin.
Produce gold.
Philosophy: to record the ensemble of two mature grand pianos as purely
as possible with the highest quality standards and the minimum technology
possible: two sphere microphones as poly-directional microphones, two wide
angles as direct sound microphones for each concert grand. The grand piano
microphones go directly without stopover into the pre-amplifiers/converters of
the Nagra equipment for the shortest possible signal path to recording. The
sphere microphones are specially pre-amplified using Sonosax PreAmp. The
microphone signals are recorded on separate tracks in 96 kHz / 24 bit resolution.
This means the mix chosen at the recording venue can be refined even further in
mastering and made even more transparent and balanced.
Johannes Müller, sound engineer, and Christoph Stickel, Mastering, Munich.
2x Steingraeber Franz Liszt concert grand
2x DPA 4006-TL (Spheres)
4x Neumann KM143 (Wide-Angle Cardioid)
Sonosax SX-M2 Mic PreAmp
Nagra VI 8-Channel Recorder
Stax SR-404 Headphones
Dynaudio Focus 160 & Confidence C4 Signature Loudspeakers
Dynaudio Air 25 Studio Monitors
The triple concert grand invented on the spot for the Ring Pianos Project. The lid
of the old Steingraeber concert grand replaced the lid removed from the second
grand piano.
Wagner, grand.
At the end of the 19th century, technical advancements coupled with pressure
from solo virtuosos led to increasingly full and dense piano sounds, but also to a
loss of polyphony and transparency. Until now, piano construction and expectations have been marked by an either/or situation: either colour or power.
This needs to be overcome. Ideally, it should be possible to reflect both sides of
the music: the murder and killing, but also the love, longing and sadness. Our
pianos, particularly of course the large Franz-Liszt concert grand used here, are
able to reflect all the voices in the orchestra.
Wagner‘s tonal visions were not linked to instruments: a good piano is ideally suited
to realising tonal visions, even without a large orchestra.
Udo Steingraeber, CEO Steingraeber Pianos, Bayreuth
An obsession with reproducing great music to a higher level of authenticity as
never experienced before was a primary basis for the foundation of Dynaudio
over 37 years ago. However, in order to achieve this ideal, realistic recordings
are needed. It was therefore a huge challenge to realise this truly extraordinary
project. Composition, instruments and artists form a harmonic whole. The more
consistent the technological design, the more it fades into the background, allowing the music to come to life. This principle has always lain behind Dynaudio
loudspeakers, and now it also applies to the recording technology used here.
The result is a Wagner in a new, higher quality audiophile dimension.
Wilfried Ehrenholz, CEO Dynaudio, Skanderborg, Executive Producer
Götterdämmerung.
Hermann Behn (1859-1927) Hamburg composer, trained under Anton Bruckner,
among others. His re-workings of Richard Wagner‘s musical dramas became so
popular that they ended up in many Wagnerite households, in spite of their at
times immensely difficult piano parts.
The climax of his career were the 50 Symphonic Movements from Richard
Wagner‘s musical dramas. What is special about this transcription, into which
the vocal parts are cleverly woven, is the way the arranger stretches the intervals
until they are almost unplayable, thus forcing the players to break the chords.
Filled chords that also demand a fifth above the octave are almost standard. In
between, there is the swirling of the water music at the beginning of the Rheingold, and the murmur of the harps as the gods move into Valhalla at the end. In
his footnotes, Behn expressly indicated that the pianist should not try to play the
notes of the broad chords together, for example by leaving out individual notes.
By means of the large intervals and leaps, which also take into consideration the
mixture of discordant harmonies, and by direct doubling on both instruments
(end of the 1st act of the Valkyries), the two instruments create a fullness of tone
not present in either the original works for two pianos or in other arrangements
of symphonic works.
„Am Grabe Richard Wagners“ (Franz Liszt, 1883)
A Dynaudio record
Recorded 22.4.-26.4.2012 in Bayreuth, Germany in the concert hall of the Protestant community.
Piano Technician – Peter Cerveny
Creative Producer – Jan Geschke
Assistant Producer – Jan Kretschmer
Executive Producer – Wilfried Ehrenholz
Sound Engineer – Johannes Müller
Mastering – Christoph Stickel
Photography – Paul Schirnhofer
Art Direction – Eike Peter Frost
Graphic – Claudia Schäfer
Special thanks to Klaus Hiemann, Sabrina Cerveny und Marina Zeuschel (Steingraeber), Arnfried Weiss, Stefan Pufe and Hotel
Goldener Anker Bayreuth
Dynaudio Records c/o
Dynaudio International GmbH
Ohepark 2
21224 Rosengarten
Germany
Phone +49 (0) 4108 - 41 80 - 0
Fax +49 (0) 4108 - 41 80 - 10
records@dynaudio.com
please feel free to come around:
www.dynaudiorecords.com
Dynaudio
Dynaudiophiles
„I will destroy each phantom that has rule o‘er men. I will
destroy the dominion of one over many, of the dead o‘er
the living, of matter over spirit; I will break the power of
the mighty, of law, of property.“
Richard Wagner
The world premiere of the Ring transcribed for 2 pianos by Hermann Behn, 1914. Wagner
without horns, drums, masquerade. Pure Wagner. On Steingraeber concert grands from Bayreuth,
in Bayreuth. Masterfully recorded and produced for the audiophile on Dynaudio. Revolutionary.