Pfitzner - Palestrina [Box set]

A Hymn of praise has been sung to this recording of Pfitzner's Palestrina ever since its debut in the early 1970s. Now that it is available at super budget price from Brilliant, those of us who held off from buying the DG set because of the expense have no excuse to wait another second.

And yet, now that I have it I regret the absence of the libretto, which apparently is itself brilliant. (Perhaps there's a download somewhere?) My opera journey began many years ago, with Wagner, and where would I have been without a translation of all those pages and pages of words? Struggling. There is a detailed synopsis but it is not indexed.

Wonderful singers and a vital interpretation of Wagnerian orchestration, as has been stated, very Parsifal but needless to say, without the incomparably sublime sensuousness and dramatic pacing demonstrated there. The music is very gratifying in its own right, so if you haven't already heard Palestrina, this'll be cheaper than a night at the opera house, and you can always pause it.

There are already two very helpful reviews of this piece posted here and they contain much good sense and acute observation. I would just like to add my suggestion that anyone whose musical taste runs to Wagner, Bruckner, Richard Strauss or Mahler or indeed late romantic music generally simply cannot afford to be without this recording. At the price advertised now it is an absolute steal.

The preludes to the three acts of the opera are three little gems of inspired orchestral composition. Hans Pfitzner did not, to my knowledge at least, compose anything to equal this wonderfully sensitive and musically exquisite dramatic exploration of human creativity.

Pfitzner whose music is usually (justly I think) in the shade of that of his near contempories, Strauss and Mahler, has in Palestrina created a work that can stand shoulder to shoulder with all but the finest work of his more famous contemporaries.

Palestrina was an opera that fascinated me long before I heard it. From all I'd read, it seemed to be one of a select group of operas, dealing with the actual process of artistic creation (Benvenuto Cellini, Die Meistersinger, Mathis der Mahler, Death in Venice to name but a few). Someone, after a performance of Parsifal in Bayreuth, once also described it to me as 'Parsifal without the jokes' - a phrase attributed to several pieces and not true in this case as there are quite a lot of jokes, albeit German jokes, in Act 2. The music, I was told, purported to be post-Wagnerian conservative but well made. The Preludes to all three acts I heard fairly early on and they whetted my appetite even more - Parsifalian simplicity in the first, thrilling energy in the second and sublime resignation in the third.
Then this Kubelik recording came along and I found all my hopes and expectations matched or bettered. Yes, it is dramatically flawed - the scene between Borromeo and Palestrina in the First Act is too long and Act 2 is dramatically very far removed from the two outer acts, brimming over with characters none of whom, apart from a brief appearance by Borromeo, appear in the other two acts. Act 3 is proportionally very short. Nevertheless, it does hang together in its own way (witness the Covent Garden production of a few years ago). And musically it is a profound experience.

Pfitzner was not necessarily a very likeable man: his politics came a lot closer to the Nazis than either Richard Strauss's or Furtwangler's, for example - probably closer to Karajan's. And his music was also pretty conservative (with a small 'c') - not so far from Strauss, closer still to Reger though much more interesting. Indeed he felt himself on something of a mission to preserve the Great Tradition of High German Art - Sachs's Heil'ge Deutsches Kunst if you like. But within the confines that he set himself, he wrote some really wonderful stuff. Late Romantic harmonies (nothing too frightening) with some superb melodic invention gives you an idea of the style. The whole sequence in which Palestrina writes his great polyphony-saving Mass, inspired by visions of his dead wife and angels (yes, I know it sounds mawkish, but it works) is superb. Pfitzner handles a huge cast of soloists in Act 2 with superb dexterity and energy as discussions descend to rows to battles and finally to a riot that is ruthlessly put down. The very end of the opera is inspired. Left alone in his moment of triumph by Pope and Cardinal, son and pupil and by the cheering crowds in the street, the old composer's hands begin to improvise on the keyboard of his organ - fade to silence and to black. This is great opera and deserves to be better known.

And, in this recording, all the performers play it as if they believe exactly that. The supremely versatile Gedda sings the title-role with all the fervour, the passion and ultimately the resignation that it demands. The other substantial part, Cardinal Borromeo, is taken by the ubiquitous Fischer-Dieskau and he gives one of his great performances; obstinate, angry, dangerous, sympathetic by turns as the score and the text demand. That long solo in Act 1 that can easily outstay its welcome: here it is completely involving and dramatic. The numerous clergy and politicians at the Council of Trent in Act 2 are cast with real strength throughout. And Kubelik's conducting is masterful, allowing the score to breathe and take its time without ever getting stagnant and giving real drive and energy to the more urgent pages.

If you have anything of a taste for German romantic opera, if you enjoy Strauss's operas for example, I do urge you to try Pfitzner's masterpiece.