Fidelio recordings--imprinting.

For me, the real obstacle here is Knappertsbusch's eccentric performance (and trust me when I say I love his Wagner and Bruckner). It's not just that it's slow, but the wild and, as far as I'm concerned, unmotivated shifts in tempo in mid-course. This performance embodies most eccentric and wrongheaded conception of rubato you could imagine. But my guess is that both the MCA transfer (which I've heard) and the new DGG/Westminster transfer would sound better than Theorema's.

I've never heard the live Fidelio with Mödl and Furtwängler, but you certainly make me want to. (I assume you know Rysanek/Fricsay, which is a great favorite of mine.)

-david gable

I'm a bit skeptical of that last. I don't think anyone has ever demonstrated to me that one recorded performance is superior to another by 'objective criteria,' unless the inferior recording is such because it doesn't include all of the music (even then, some feel that certain works go better with cuts), or it's riddled with wrong notes, or it's clearly inferior on sonic grounds (say, the Callas/Giulini _Traviata_ vs. a well-made studio recording). But judgments among two interpretations are always subjective, even when an overwhelming majority/consensus forms that one interpretation is better thought out, deeper, more individual and distinctive, etc., and a preference for the other one seems bizarre, or indicates that the person who holds that view is listening for things the majority considers beside the point (say, preferring Kiri Te Kanawa's Tosca to that of Maria Callas).

In any event, I'm not one of those people who have a strong tendency to 'imprint' on first-heard recordings. I know what people are talking about when they say they've done this, and I do get spoiled with certain works and have a hard time warming to something other than my favorite performance. But I seem as often as not to prefer my second, third, or some later recording to the first. A partial list of 'firsts' for me that are decidedly not my favorites: Karajan's Verdi Requiem (the Berlin recording w Freni, unfortunately; not his wonderful Scala film), Sawallisch's Schubert 'Great,' the Levine/Domingo _Otello_, Fleischer/Szell Beethoven piano concerti, Giulini/Cappuccilli _Rigoletto_, Szell/Cleveland Brahms syms, Brendel Beethoven piano sonatas (the middle set, on Philips), Colin Davis/BSO Sibelius syms, lots of Rubinstein's stereo remakes of Chopin...

Nothing there is terrible (a couple of them come close), but I didn't have trouble deciding that something I heard subsequently was 'better,' by my lights. In a few cases it was the difference between my not really caring about the music and liking it, or between liking it and something stronger.

I know Furtwangler could be a bit slow at times, but that seems a bit excessive.

Tony Movshon

How about six sides?

-david gable

OOPS

May be it's a bootleg Celi...

For the little it's worth, I 'imprinted' on our local library's copy of the Bampton-Peerce-Toscanini, pops, cracks, and all. And only four sides even with Leonore 3.

I'm sure I also 'imprinted' on that Toscanini set of _Fidelio_, even though it was missing the dialogue. (There is dialogue in the _melodrama_ in Act 2, sc.i.) And, alas!, I managed not to hear the Met broadcast cond. Bruno Walter with Flagstad, Svanholm, and others ca. 1950. My first hearing of the opera was a recording that proved offputting even to me in my tender years: The one on the Oceanic label cond. by a certain Pflüger and with soprano Margarete Bäumer as Leonore and tenor Heinz Sauerbaum as Florestan. For some time this was the only available recording! Eventually, I heard the VPO/Böhm performance that was on Vox (deriving from a WWII broadcast) which, while not great, was markedly better than the Oceanic set from East Germany. Both sets did include some dialogue. The issue of the Toscanini/NBC broadcast solved a lot of problems for me. To be sure, later sets, such as those by Klemperer, Fricsay and others were further improvements...