Karita Mattila, Francisco Araiza, Eva Lind, Kurt Moll, Colin Davis - Weber: Der Freischutz (1991)

WEBER. DER FREISCHUTZ. Karita Mattila (sop) Agathe; Francisco Araiza (ten) Max; Eva Lind (sop) Aennchen; Ekkehard Wias- chiha (bass) Kaspar; Siegfried Lorenz (bar) Ottakar; Kurt Moll (bass) Hermit; Thomas Thomaschke (bass) Kuno; Will Quadfiieg (spkr) Samiel; Andreas Scheibner (bar) Kilian; Leipzig Radio Chorus; Staatskapelle Dresden / Sir Cohn Davis. Philips ® EJ 426 3194PH2 (two cassettes, nas); CD 426 3192PH2 (two discs, nas: 136 minutes: DDD). Notes, text and translation included.
Selected comparison:
C. Kleiber (11/86) 415 432-2GH2
The Wolf's Glen is in every sense at the centre of Der Freischutz—structuraiiy (replacing the socalled central finale), tonally (composed around the diabolical chord that disturbs the harmonic regularity), orchestrally (for its use of the darkest sounds Weber could imagine) and above or below all for its release of the latent horror that is found to lie only a little beneath the surface of normal, contented, accepted patterns of life. Sir Cohn Davis points his whole performance powerfully in this direction. The very opening of the Overture is mysterious and brooding, with the answering horns solemn rather than warmly evocative. The final celebration of forgiveness and reconciliation is tinged with an awareness of the experience all have survived. In the Wolf's Glen itself, superlatively played by the Dresden orchestra, Kaspar's exchanges with Samiel generate a power that looks straight forward to Siegfried.
This strong emphasis on the dark centre of the work places particular stress on the role of Kaspar. The opera is set "soon after the end of the Thirty Years' War", and usually this is taken simply as an indication of period. But Kaspar, as he reminds Max after his sinister drinking song, served under Tilly and took part in the Magdeburger Tanz, the most appalling of all the massacres in the devastation that scourged Germany. Ekkehard Wlaschiha brings a bleak relish to his nihilistic ditty, which he claims to have learnt in the wars, and this prepares the way for a performance that gives the role something near a heroic quality as he acknowledges the dark forces in "Schweig! schweig!", and as they overwhelm him when the devil's bullet finally claims him.
Max is sung by Francisco Araiza more as victim than as the hero flawed by weakness; he is a little colourless, and his tone tends to spread around the note. "Durch die Wiilder" is rather greyly sung, though he manages well his final confession, with the eloquent bassoon obbligato. It is a quality of the whole performance that Davis should underplay the brightness and freshness against which the evil is set. His tempos are flexible, as Weber wished, but tend to the slow and heavily emphatic. The Peasant's March lumbers along, and the Waltz becomes a Ländler: this is reasonable, and consistent, but the singers who represent the freshest and lightest aspects of the work have to accommodate to this approach. Aennchen's cheerily flirtatious song is rather slow, and Eva Lind does not manage to give the character its usual brightness to set against the graver qualities of Agathe.
Karita Mattila's performance here is a disappointment. Her voice is warm, but she seems to have difficulty with the line. Weber's phrases usually have a very clear harmonic outline, but she moves too regularly from one note to another without giving a sense of direction; there is a feeling that she is perhaps going through a difficult patch vocally, as there is little sense of ease in her singing here.
This is, then, a Freischütz of a distinctively dark hue, which will not be to everybody's taste. Little to mine is the quantity of noises off, not only the baying hounds and grunting boar and so forth in the Wolf's Glen, but all the village noises—chat tering and giggles—which the producers have applied in the earlier scenes. The music does not need it. The policy about dialogue is rather erratic, too. It is, of course, cut, which is understandable especially on a recording; but there are losses. The numbers are sometimes cut together rather abruptly: there is hardly a moment for the Bridesmaids' Chorus (which is nicely sung) to finish on its troubled little cello murmur before the huntsmen burst in, with a sense of violence that is perhaps intended but that does not really work. Carlos Kleiber's DG recording, made coincidentally with the same orchestra, remains, as I said in November 1986, full of penetrating insight and benefits from a fine cast.
The actual sound in this new recording is, especially in the Wolf's Glen, vivid and detailed, well capturing the eloquence of Weber's wonderful scoring. I have not seen text and translation nor any of the accompanying material.