José van Dam (bass-bar) Hans Sachs; Ben Heppner (ten) Walther; Karita Mattila (sop) Eva; René Pape (bass) Pogner; Alan Opie (bar) Beckmesser; Herbert Lippert (ten) David; Iris Vermillion (mez) Magdalene; Albert Dohmen (bar) Kothner; Roberto Saccà (ten) Vogelgesang; Gary Martin (bass) Nachtigall; John Horton Murray (bar) Zorn; Richard Byrne (ten) Eisslinger; Steven Tharp (ten) Moser; Kevin Deas (bass) Schwartz; Kelly Anderson (bass) Foltz, Nightwatchman; Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus / Sir Georg Solti.

Decca 452 606-2DHO4 (four discs: 259 minutes; DDD). Notes, text and translation included. Recorded during concert performances in Orchestra Hall, Chicago on September 23rd-27th, 1995.

Like the Ring and Parsifal, Die Meistersinger took many years from its first inception to reach its final form. Much of the complexity of all three great music-dramas reflects the complexity of Wagner’s development from radical youth to profound maturity. The germ of Die Meistersinger was a riot in the streets of Nuremberg, caused by the teasing of a pretentious singer, which Wagner, aged 22, witnessed in the summer of 1835. By 1845 this incident had crystallized into the rivalry which was the centre of the first prose sketch of the work. By the time the opera was performed in 1868, Wagner was 55 and the emotional weight of the work had shifted to the wise, sad, amused, moral triumph of Sachs, generously handing over to his young rival both the girl he loves and enough of the tradition of singing to turn undisciplined feeling into art.

Solti, at 84, has recorded Die Meistersinger for the second time, with a strong cast, and with excellent playing from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. It is a mark, perhaps, of his own youthfulness that the drive of his performance is with the young and energetic, rather than with the subtler and more thoughtful, elements of the score. Walther, splendidly sung by Ben Heppner, whose voice has a true Heldentenor ring, is well presented as an arrogant interloper in a world he does not understand. His first shot at his prize song, words and melody tumbling out of him in a tentative rush, is entirely convincing – as is his more confident, and slightly slower, finished effort at the Festwiese. But the early-morning short-sleeves opening of the third act would be more moving if Sachs's nobility in helping Walther to harness his inspiration, against Sachs's own interests, had been more solidly prepared in the "Wahn" monologue. José van Dam's Sachs is beautifully sung throughout, but Solti too rarely gives him the space and scope for the meditative responses to challenge with which Wagner underpins the whole work.

In both Sachs's monologues the breadth of his thought-process, and of the mixed feelings which guide it, is
sacrificed to moments of expansive climax and to the excitement of the vivid memories with which he is trying to cope. The Act 1 row in the singing-school, and the Act 2 riot in the street, ruefully remembered by Sachs in the "Flieder" monologue and the "Wahn" monologue respectively, have more impact here than their defeat. The row and riot themselves, on the other hand, are, not surprisingly, performed with a sharp and appropriately frightening clarity by Solti and his whole cast and orchestra.

In these scenes, Beckmesser is crucial, his anxious spitefulness inciting the masters to round on Walter in Act 1, and his serenade setting off the biter insistence of Sachs’s cobbling song which provokes the chaos of Act 2. Alan Opie's Beckmesser is excellent, sung with great intelligence so as to convey exactly the expert but stupid mastersinger whose jealous admiration for Sachs blinds him to reality (as Sachs’s briefly jealous admiration for Walther's talent so signally does not).

René Pape's affecting Pogner is also well sung, although, as with Sachs, he is not always allowed by the pace of the performance fully to develop his role. With this recording's emphasis so definitely on youth and energy, one would expect fine, positive contributions from Eva, David, and Magdalene. Karita Mattila's Eva is the least satisfying of the three. She sings with intensity but without much significance of her words or of Eva's muddled feelings. So that neither her confusion in Act 2 nor her cry of anguish, "O Sachs, mein Freund!", at the emotional crux of Act 3, carry enough weight. It is Sachs, not Eva, who here delivers the exquisite phrasing that holds together the quintet's moment of reconciliation and resolution. David (Herbert Lippert) and Magdalene (Iris Vermillion) sing with most attractive warmth and verbal dexterity when Solti is pushing the score along at maximum speed. And David's rough, keen, ambitious delivery of his somewhat scornful singing instructions to Walther in Act 1, and his well-paced apprentice songs for Sachs in Act 3, could not be better delivered by both singer and conductor.

The is a most enjoyable recording of this wonderful work, with a strikingly positive and heartwarming climax, though some of the shadows in Sachs's character (and even in Walther’s: there is no orchestral shiver, for example, to follow the words: "Am stillen Herd") are sadly missing.

-Lucy Beckett International Opera Collector