Wagner: Marches & Overtures
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Free Music Notes for Wagner: Marches & Overtures
Free Music Review: Some curiosity value, perhaps, but the music here is really, truly awful
Hit: 2 Stars
I am aware that a recording like this probably needed to be made; these works are not generally available elsewhere, as far as I know (though the Kaisermarch was recorded by Caspar Richter for EMI and both this and the Grosser Festmarch have been recorded by Janowski). And they do, I suppose, give a fuller picture of Wagner the composer (yet again, the lack of interest he patently showed in these works might suggest otherwise). The performances, originally made for Marco Polo in 1983 aren't bad, either, although they are far from perfect (more on that later); the same thing goes for the sound quality. The problem is that the music is not particularly interesting; in fact, the best is banal and pompous, and some of it is really quite awful. This disc cannot, as a result, be recommended to the general listener, even though I am sure some people with particular historical or biographical interests will have to hear it; those merely `curious' should pass it over. Listening to incidental and occasional music by other, lesser composer, I am rather surprised how much better their efforts are and how much more care they must have put into such tasks than Wagner did.
Polonia is an early work and might display the influences of Bellini and Rossini, but it is a rather dismal affair - it is inaccurate to say that it goes on for far longer than its material would sustain, insofar as the material would probably sustain no length at all. No matter how hard Kojian and his band tried (not very hard, one suspects) they could hardly have made anything of this one. But it is if not superior then at least not inferior to Rule Britannia, which engraves the famous tune in material that undeniably presages Der fliegende Holländer. The results are almost unbelievably tacky and banal - a real test of patience for the listener with its garish, leaden textures and utter lack of spirit or momentum.
Well, this is early music and Wagner may perhaps be excused. But the absolutely appallingly dreadful Grosser Festmarsch cannot. This is mature Wagner and uses material that sounds like monstrous, lead-coated distortions of the operatic music written at approximately the same time - a horrible non-theme flogged to death almost endlessly, and gruesomely scored to boost. It must really be one of the most ugly, boring, vulgar, feeble and unappealing pieces of music I have ever heard, utterly devoid of any redeeming qualities whatsoever. At least the Kaisermarch isn't blatantly repulsive as the Grosser Festmarch, but there was obviously not much inspiration going into it either. Some of its quieter moments are actually not all that bad, and the use of Ein feste Burg is done with some nobility and panache. Yet it is definitely not mandatory listening for any but the most ardent Wagnerite (the other works on this disc aren't even that).
The performances are energetic but unpolished; the strings are sometimes admirably opulent, but there is some questionable intonation in the wind sections. Still, I guess they are more than serviceable, although one feels that Kojian and his band don't quite put their hearts into the effort - though I cannot really hold that against them. The recording is constricted and cavernous at the same time, not helped by the dense textures Wagner gives them to work with. It doesn't really matter much, however - general listeners are advised to give this issue a wide berth on grounds of the musical content (or absolute absence of such). I do, however, understand that some people need to have this one, if only for letting it dust away in the archives. There really is very little to enjoy here, and the disc would have warranted a single star were it not for the fact that Wagner's signature makes them modestly interesting to musical archaeologists.
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