The Wanderer Prelude

I must confess to having a bit of an obsession to the Vorspiel zum dritten Aufzug (Prelude to Act III) to Siegfried. It is dominated by the so-called Wanderer Leitmotif, and is sometimes referred to as the Wanderer Prelude as a result. It is one of the hardest Vorspiele in the Ring cycle to get right, mostly because it is a roller coaster ride of rapid crescendi and diminuendi. Most conductors obviously give up from word go and don't even try to follow Wagner's dynamic markings.

The most important of these crescendo-decrescendi can be found in the opening phrase:

Notice in particular, how the prelude is marked to start piano. There is a build up from there to a crescendo, climaxing in a forte on the last note. Three trombones (3 Posaunen) enter at the climax of the phrase starting piano then building up to fortifying the forte climax right on the final note.

Few conductors sound like they even have even bothered to get this right. There are a couple of notable exceptions when it comes to getting the Wanderer Prelude right. First and foremost amongst these is Karl Böhm:



These crescendi and diminuendi recur constantly throughout the prelude and so this first entry of the Wanderer Leitmotiv sets the tone for the whole prelude. Get this wrong and you get the whole prelude wrong. Get it right and it sets the foundation for the entire prelude, which itself gradually builds up to a climax.

The other conductors who get this dead right is Rudolf Kempe with the Bayreuther Festspiele in 1960 and Hans Swarowsky with the Grosses Orchester (mostly ex-Czech Philharmonic members who had fled the Soviet crackdown at home).  Clemens Krauss in his 1953 Bayreuth cycle also almost gets it right as does Boulez in the 1976 Centennial Ring.

With the vast majority of conductors you really get little or no sense of a crescendo build up to a forte here. Even Kempe doesn't get it right in his Covent Garden Ring cycle from 1957, and he was legendary for his extremely wide dynamic range. I guess the orchestra was just under-rehearsed.

Here is an example of what not to do from Solti:




It is typical of this conductor that he rushes the build-up to the crescendo. Instead of the crescendo climaxing on the final note, it climaxes in the middle of the Wanderer theme, well before the final note.

However, it would be totally unfair to pick on Solti here, because it is not as though many others fair any better. At least there is a fair semblance of a crescendo starting out a bit more softly. He just ruins it with his usual impatience by rushing to the climax prematurely. Many do a lot worse. Levine has no crescendo at all, and you would think he has just scratched out the dynamic markings from the score altogether.  Knappertsbusch has virtually no gradation from piano to forte at all -  a bit under-rehearsed no doubt (or perhaps even unrehearsed). Simone Young likewise has virtually no gradation in dynamics in her generally very good Hamburg Ring cycle. Even Takashi Asahina (a legendary conductor with something of a cult following) plays almost everything mezzo forte here in his all Japanese Ring cycle.  Karajan too joins the exalted company of those with who have edited out all contrasts in dynamics: both at Bayreuth in 1951 and in the studio with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Just having a contrast in the dynamics from mezzo forte to a vague forte doesn't really count either: it has to go from clear piano to clear forte on the final note. In this regard, Marek Janowski with the Staatskapelle Dresden lacks the all important pronounced gradations in dynamics from piano to forte as does Franz von Hösslin at Bayreuth in 1927, Keilberth at Bayreuth in 1952,  Reginald Goodall with the ENO in 1973, Haitink with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in 1990, Barenboim at Bayreuth (1992), or Christian Thielemann at Bayreuth (2008). However, at least they tried.

Even Furtwängler only manages a very modest gradation in dynamics, and then only in his La Scala Milan recording - his Roman orchestra sound rather under-rehearsed. He also rather idiosyncratically starts off at a somewhat dragging tempo and slightly picks up speed as the prelude builds up, before slowing the tempo back down after the climax.