R.シュトラウス: 4つの最後の歌、ワーグナー: 楽劇「トリスタンとイゾルデ」より前奏曲、愛の死(第3幕)、他

初出音源有り！
フルトヴェングラー＆フィルハーモニア管＆フラグスタート
1950年5月22日、ロンドン；ロイヤル・アルバート・ホール
Testamentレーベル・サイトでは、「Broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall London 22 May 1950」、「STRAUSS Four Last Songs World Premiere Performance」とコメントされています。演奏記録としては有名でしたが、遂にテスタメントからCD化されるという事で、コレクターズ・ファンには大注目作と言えるでしょう。「4つの最後の歌」は、以前LP、国内・輸入盤で既に出ていますが、今回の復刻は期待です(過大な期待は禁物ですが)。そして、ワーグナーの「トリスタン」、「神々」が本盤の“目玉”。50年、フルトヴェングラーがフィルハーモニア管と残した貴重なワーグナーとして熟聴の価値有りです。

R.シュトラウスの「四つの最後の歌」世界初演となった1950年5月22日の公演を収録した一枚。前半のR.シュトラウスは、これまで幾多の非正規盤でリリースされてきましたが、どれも状態の悪いアセテート盤を使用しており、酷い音質のものばかりでした。今回の正規盤リリースにあたり、TESTAMENT社では比較的状態の良い盤を入手し、過去最高の音質を実現。細かなディテールや、フルトヴェングラーがオケから引き出す暖かみのある音色を聴き取ることができます。なお、この録音はこれまで本番ではなくドレス・リハーサルとされてきましたが、実際には本番の演奏が収録されています。
後半のワーグナーは、これまで全て消失したと思われていた幻の音源。状態の良いアセテート盤からの復刻による世界初発売となります。当日の演奏曲目のうち、「ジークフリート牧歌」と「ニュルンベルクのマイスタージンガー」前奏曲はディスクの損傷により復刻できませんでしたが、その他は良好な音質で蘇っており、フルトヴェングラーの芸術を存分に堪能することができます。

In the three month period before this concert, Furtwangler had conducted three complete cycles of Wagner's Ring at La Scala Milan, with Kirsten Flagstad as the Brunnhilde throughout. Then he had flown to Buenos Aires, where he stayed for a month, conducting ten concerts, including three of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, with the soloists singing in German and the chorus in Spanish. This London concert was the first he gave on his return. He quite often favoured concerts with a large number of shortish items, the kind of thing that is wildly unfashionable today. Even so, this one seems to be both an exhausting and miscellaneous affair, even if most of it is by Wagner. Unfortunately, the Meistersinger Prelude and the Siegfried Idyll are missing ? until very recently it was assumed that the whole concert was, apart from the premiere of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs. Who knows what even now may be unearthed?
The Strauss songs completed the first half of the programme. The performance (often wrongly alleged to be the dress rehearsal) has long been available on numerous 'pirate' labels, in quite dreadful sound. The acetates from which the transfers have been taken in the past were hideously worn, with enormous amounts of swish, groove-wear, crackle and distortion in loud passages. On the present disc the sound is by no means ideal, but it is far superior to anything available previously, and for anyone at all used to listening to historical recordings there will be no problems. Once one knows that there are these shortcomings, the grandeur of the interpretation more than compensates for them. The sound is basically clear, plenty of orchestral detail can be heard, and the warmth of tone that Furtwangler invariably drew from orchestras is immediately apparent. So is the warmth and freshness of Flagstad's voice, here sounding much more youthful than she did two years later when she recorded the complete Tristan under Furtwangler, and the final scene of Gotterdammerung in one of the spare sessions. Not only fresher, but seemingly more confident that her voice would do everything she asked of it. She takes risks, to thrilling effect. Her breath control is, as always, miraculous. And in the Strauss songs her firm rhythmic sense means that rapport with the orches
tra is virtually flawless. Can a new work ever have been graced with so magnificent an Urauffuhrung? The constant slight modifications of tempo, the ebb and flow which Wagner had seen as so crucial to the performance of all music, and an unobtrusive feature of Furtwangler's conducting always, can be heard throughout.
Extract from the booklet note Michael Tanner, 2007