Class of ’56: David Breckbill assesses broadcast mementos of New Bayreuth

A year ago I found myself exclaiming over how the sound quality of Decca’s 1955 recording of the Ring at Bayreuth transformed the effect of Josef Keilberth’s conducting for the good. In Walhall’s present batch of recordings from the 1956 Bayreuth Festival, the microphone placement generally captures voices extremely prominently (although Kundry sounds distant in the first part of the Seduction Scene in Parsifal Act II, for example), so that what one consistently hears is the singers’ efforts to project their sound rather than the degree of dynamic shading one would have heard in the auditorium of the Festspielhaus.