Word: sawallisch
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Bayreuth Festival have usually focused more on the props than the performance. But last week at the festival's curtain raiser-a new Wolfgang Wagner production of Tristan und Isolde-all ears were sharply tuned to the sounds coming out of the concealed orchestra pit. There Conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch, at 34 perhaps the most gifted German conductor to emerge since Herbert von Karajan and the youngest ever to conduct at Bayreuth, was making his most important operatic debut...
Flaws & Cheers. If the production itself was undistinguished (marked, said Wolfgang Wagner, by "objective sobriety"), the first yearning sighs of the orchestral prelude left little doubt that this Tristan was in expert hands. Dressed in tuxedo trousers and open-throated shirt, Conductor Sawallisch led his orchestra through a performance marked by a water-clear sense of orchestral relationships and rock-sure control. He attacked at a slower than usual tempo, underscored the sensuous quality of the music without letting his orchestra wallow in it. There were the usual first-night flaws. During the second-act love duet, the word...