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http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Nov06/Wagner_Preiser89940.htm Posted by Martin Walker on November 16, 2006, 2:22 pm 213.36.120.63 I wonder what the basis is for the category "well known" in Jonathan Woolf's highly informed review: he says "Some are well known - Briesemeister, Erb, Jadlowker – whilst others much less so; Fritz Trostorff, Franz Xaver Battisti and Benno Haberl for example. I found Briesemeister, commanding if rather bleaty in his extract from Siegfried in 1908. Knote, less well known" etc. I for one have never heard of Briesemeister, who is also not mentioned by Steane in The Grand Tradition, whereas Knote is, Sembach too - and while Steane does not mention Jörn, I have heard a recording of the latter. Preiser also has a Heldentenöre CD with singers like Heinrich Hensel, of whom they used to have a complete CD - the reason, I suppose, that they left him off this one. I make these remarks not in order to carp - I am genuinely interested in what Jonathan knows upon this subject.  Post a Response

Re: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Nov06/Wagner_Preiser89940.htm Posted by Jonathan Woolf on November 18, 2006, 1:25 pm, in reply to "http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Nov06/Wagner_Preiser89940.htm" 87.74.17.111 Actually Otto Briesemeister (1866-1910) was a most interesting singer. He became a military physician but took singing lessons and made his debut in 1893 in Il Trovatore. He was based in Breslau before being invited, I believe by Cosima Wagner, to sing at Bayreuth. It was here that he really made his mark, as the leading Loge of his time, and he sang at Bayreuth every year for a decade, until 1909, the year before his premature death. He also sang Siegfried, Lohengrin, and Siegmund there and elsewhere. He guested in Berlin, Munich, all over Germany in fact, and also Scandinavia and London. The fact that he managed to carry on his dual career as leading Wagner tenor and throat specialist in Berlin is a matter of interest! I’m not sure if this contributed to an odd situation with regard to the Met in New York. Wrongly I assumed he’d sung there but it appears he had a “provisional contract” – whatever that is – and never actually appeared on stage there, though clearly his reputation had preceded him. I don’t know the cause of his death, though it does seem to have been progressive and not sudden, but he was still recording up to 1908 and singing until 1909. As far as I know Briesemeister made only 25 sides and 3 Edison cylinders between 1904 and 1908. The record labels were Grammophon, Anker, Beka and Odeon and they’re all very rare. On disc he was variously accompanied by the ubiquitous Seidler-Winkler (piano) and by conductor Friedrich Kark. The last records were styled “Herzogl. Kammersanger” and he also tended to retain his Dr. on disc and programme. The vast bulk of these records were of Wagner but he did record Schubert, Schumann and Verdi. Some work still needs to be done on his records. He is naturally included in the big 10 CD 100 Jahre Bayreuth auf Schallplatte; the early Festival Singers 1876-1906 where he’s represented by five sides. The author and compiler of this Preiser disc has already included him in a previous compilation Helden an geweihtem ort alongside such Wagner luminaries as Winkelmann, Ernest van Dyck, Jacques Urlus, Carl Burrian, Slezak and others. It’s a shame that the great rarity and paucity of his recordings have somewhat obscured his distinguished career and perhaps discouraged English-speaking writers from investigating him but as the twentieth century’s first great Loge he will always have an honoured place. I did complain in my review that he was a bit of a bleater but at least he wasn’t a typical 1900 Wagner bawler; better a bleat than a bawl any day so far as I’m concerned. Jonathan Woolf  Post a Response

Re: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Nov06/Wagner_Preiser89940.htm Posted by Martin Walker on November 21, 2006, 12:05 pm, in reply to "Re: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Nov06/Wagner_Preiser89940.htm" 213.36.24.17 Now that's what I call an answer, Jonathan - thank you very much. I shall certainly seek out recordings of Briesemeister, particularly since, like you, I don't mind a bit of what you call "bleat" - in fact, I rather like it, if it isn't too sheepish. I wonder if it isn't exaggerated by shellac reproduction of acoustical recordings, where speeds were never entirely accurate or uniform - I know that some early LP transcriptions of De Lucia displayed a very pronounced rapid quaver that is not heard in all his recordings, though his vibrato is still marked at times (it is very intermittent in the recording of "Che gelida manina" I am listening to right now; the interpretation would be frowned at nowadays for other reasons...).  Post a Response

Re: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Nov06/Wagner_Preiser89940.htm Posted by Paul Serotsky on November 22, 2006, 12:17 pm, in reply to "Re: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Nov06/Wagner_Preiser89940.htm" 80.229.144.169 At the risk of saying something that is all too obvious, in which case take no notice of me: Quite apart from speed inaccuracies in both recording and replay, the acoustical recording process itself had a very inconsistent and lumpy frequency response. It is this that is responsible for most of the strange sounds you hear (the performers must take the blame for the rest). Sometimes, by listening carefully, you can detect the "lumps" - some, but by no means all, restoration engineers make use of sophisticated equalisation techniques to smooth out these lumps. To distinguish a "rapid quaver" in a singer's voice (vibrato) from a similar effect in the recording or playback process (flutter), listen to the accompaniment, homing in on instruments that generally do not use vibrato (e.g. piano or clarinet?). If the effect is pervasive, blame the record/playback chain, otherwise - regardless of the sound of any of the singer's other recordings - it must be vocal vibrato.  Post a Response

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