Search - Bartok, Sebastian :: Bluebeard's Castle

Revelatory Bluebeard & Bonus Items

Jeffrey Lipscomb | Sacramento, CA United States | 05/31/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This hard to find Arlecchino CD "Great Forgotten Conductors: Georges Sebastian Vol. 1" contains a magnificent and unforgettable live 1951 performance of Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle," with Mihaly Szekely and Klara Palankay, plus a selection of Tzigans and Hungarian folk songs sung by Szekeley. I cannot recommend this CD too highly - it's a collector's item that is definitely worth a vigilant search.



Budapest-born conductor Georges Sebastian (1903-1989) studied with Bruno Walter at Munich (1922-23), was briefly an assistant conductor at the NY Met, and was soon after an opera conductor at Hamburg and Leipzig. With the rise of the Third Reich, Sebastian chose exile in the USSR, where he shared conducting of the Moscow Radio Orchestra with Golovanov and Samosud (1931-37). In 1935 Sebastian gave the world premiere of "Boris" in Mussorgsky's original version, and in Moscow he gave complete symphony cycles of Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann. Sebastian returned to the U.S. in 1938 and worked at the San Francisco Opera, and after the war, was head of the Paris Opera for many years.



Most of Sebastian's recordings have been long out of print. On Urania and Remington LPs he made great recordings of the Dukas Symphony in C and the ballet "La Peri" (once available on a Vol. 2 companion CD from Arlecchino), the Prokofiev 4th Symphony, Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique," etc. I would love to see some enterprising label re-issue all of these remarkable discs (my LPs are rather long in the tooth). Sebastian was an exceptionally lyrical and dramatic conductor in both operatic & symphonic repertoire. His live recording of Wagner's "Wesendonck Lieder" with Kirsten Flagstad (on a Dante LYS 2-CD set titled "Hommage A Georges Sebastian") remains my favorite account of the orchestral version.



Sebastian was also closely connected to Bartok, and it was for the great Hungarian basso profundo Mihaky Szekely (1901-1963) that Bartok transcribed the role of Bluebeard into a lower tessitura, which meant that the composer also made changes in the orchestration of his operatic masterpiece. The live performance heard here in good mono sound was, in fact, the European premiere. Sebastian first performed the revised version in Bartok's presence at Harvard University in 1942 with a group of voluntary musicians.



This Bluebeard (sung in Hungarian) is simply extraordinary. As the composer's favorite exponent of Bluebeard, Szekely gives a magnificent performance: moving, straightforwardly eloquent, and tinged with tragic loneliness. To my ears he was, along with Russians Mark Reizen and Alexander Kipnis, the finest of 20th Century basso profundos. Judith is sung by Hungarian mezzo soprano Klara Palankay (1921- ) who, along with the more somber-voiced Olga Szony, was considered in Hungary the role's finest exponent (however, Palankay does duck the high C "Ah!" at the opening of the 5th Door). Sebastian leads a sensitive reading which, to my ears, joins those of Fricsay (DG), Susskind (Bartok CD) and Dorati (Mercury) as the finest-conducted recordings.



Unlike the first-ever studio recording by Susskind (with the fine bass Endre Koreh and soprano Judith Hellwig), and like most subsequent recordings, the opera's spoken introduction is omitted here. Szekely is in better voice than he was in the later studio version with Dorati (which is severely compromised by Szony's squally high notes). He is also more effective to my taste than the rather exaggerated Fischer-Dieskau under Fricsay (whose version is, unfortunately, slightly cut and sung in German) and the rather lightweight Walter Berry under Kertesz (Decca).



The bonus items with Szekely offer some incredibly zesty and idiomatic accompaniments by the Toki Horvat Hungarian Puzsta Band. Their wild, gypsy abandon in the Czardas that was used by Brahms in one of his Hungarian Dances simply puts everybody else's version (except Lehel's) to shame.



Highly recommended! One of the all-time great Bluebeards and some truly remarkable bonus items.



Jeff Lipscomb



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