Wagner's Meistersinger

On Saturday Dec. 7 we had the rare occasion to hear on the radio Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg. The performance was recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival in August 1996. Radio Klasik FM managed to obtain the recording by courtesy of Deutsche Welle.

The heartening fact is that thanks to such programs we feel we are no longer in a backwater of the international classical music scene.

Despite Bayreuth's great reputation, Meistersinger this time was not entirely satisfactory, but then when is a Wagner opera really consistent in performance from beginning to end, i.e. an average of four hours? However, Wagner's music is quite intriguing and I gladly take up the challenge to listen to his music.

This Meistersinger saw the debut of many young international singers who had already made a name for themselves elsewhere, America's rising star Renee Fleming engaged by conductor Daniel Barenboim himself, Germany's Andreas Schimdt, Peter Seiffert and a few more. It was worthwhile to listen to these young talented singers.

I think Barenboim had occasional problems of keeping everything together during the performance. Even in 1984 when I saw and heard Siegfried Jerusalem sing rapturously in Bayreuth, the performance had its weaknesses, perhaps because Hermann Prey had to be replaced due to illness. In Bayreuth one has to accept adversities, first because opera is an "impossible" art, second because it is Wagner and third there is the contingency of a replacement.

On the other hand one is often amply rewarded by the ambience of the occasion and by the high standard of performances: Singers who are elsewhere soloists become members of the chorus in Bayreuth (I remember how I nearly fell from my seat on hearing the first tones of the incredible voices of the chorus in Parsifal) and orchestra members who are recruited from among the best of Germany's orchestras to play in Bayreuth during their annual leave in August.

To Deutsche Welle's representative office in Jakarta, I would not request a second opera now, but I would like to hear Wagner's Tristan und Isolde of the 1997 Bayreuth Festival. I am sure Tristan is on next year. If the radio station in Cologne can record it, I shall be very happy.

Still about Deutsche Welle, on Dec.8 there was on Radio Klasik FM an orchestral concert of Strauss, Mendelssohn and Beethoven played by the orchestra of the Bayrischen Rundfunk under Marek Janowski. The occasion was a 1995 summer concert in Bad Kissingen. I wonder which Richard Strauss tone poem it was. It was beautifully played and did full justice to the color shadings of the composition.

I am looking forward to Act Three of Meistersinger (with Walther's Prize Song) on Saturday afternoon, Dec. 14.

S. HARMONO

Jakarta