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Wagner: Parsifal

Jonas Kaufmann

Classical - Released March 1, 2024 | Sony Classical

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Choc de Classica
The world was due for a major new recording of Wagner's Parsifal, with some years having elapsed since the monster, four-hour work had seen a fresh one. There are a number of attractions to this one, recorded live at the Vienna State Opera in 2021. First is the production, designed and directed from house arrest in Russia by Kirill Serebrennikov. The version was controversial at the time, and subsequent events have made it timely. Serebrennikov transplants the tale to a modern prison, with characters in tracksuits and the like; the complex witch Kundry is (believe it or not) a photojournalist. None of this affects the singing, which is done straight, but the release graphics give one an idea. The major draw for many listeners, and probably the one that put the album on classical best-seller charts in early 2024, will be the presence of star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, in fine form in the title role (and album listeners get to avoid the flashback staging designed to circumvent that fact that the 50-something Kaufmann was playing a young man). The instrumental work from the Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper is very strong. However, what really puts this performance in the history books is the performance of mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca as Kundry. This was apparently her first appearance in a Wagner opera, but in the top-volume material in Act III, she is fully Kaufmann's equal. Some may find that she carries the whole production, with a rising line of intensity running through the whole giant structure. In any event, even listeners who own the Parsifal of Herbert von Karajan or one of the other classic readings will want to check this recording out.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Wagner: Parsifal, WWV 111

Martha Modl

Opera - Released June 2, 2023 | Profil Edition Guenter Haenssler

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The production of Wagner's overgrown Grail tale Parsifal from the shrine at Bayreuth, directed by the composer's grandson Wieland and first staged in 1951, was famously spare in its design; the conductor, Hans Knappertsbusch ("Kna," to perfect Wagnerites), thought the sets were still to be constructed and was chagrined to find that there really were very few. Vocally, however, the music was luxuriant. By the time of this 1955 live recording, most of the singers, including Martha Mödl as Kundry, were veterans of the production, and there was a strong newcomer, baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Amfortas, already with his characteristic honeyed tone. The production was recorded in the studio in 1951, with somewhat better sound than on this release, but really, the live sound is impressive for 1955 (some of the credit should go to Hänssler Classic's remastering), and text intelligibility is great. Further, Knappertsbusch is known to have preferred live performance to recording, and the production benefits from a good deal of forward motion; sample around and compare timings with other recordings, for almost everywhere, Knappertsbusch comes in faster than average. Yet the music never feels rushed in any way. Of course, several generations of Wagner singers have come and gone since this recording was made, but for those wanting to experience Wagner "from the source," this may be a prime choice despite its age. © James Manheim /TiVo
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Parsifal

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra

Classical - Released May 29, 2011 | Challenge Classics

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Wagner: Parsifal WWV 111 by Clemens Krauss

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Opera - Released October 21, 2021 | Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording

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The Wagner Project

Matthias Goerne

Classical - Released November 24, 2017 | harmonia mundi

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Richard Wagner : Der Fliegende Holländer - Pierre-Louis Dietsch : Le vaisseau fantôme ou le maudit des mers

Marc Minkowski

Classical - Released November 4, 2013 | naïve classique

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
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Mahler & Wagner: Rückert-Lieder, Wesendonck-Lieder, Prélude & Mort d'Isolde

Felicity Lott

Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder - Released January 1, 2007 | Aeon

Transcribing Mahler's five Rückert Lieder plus Wagner's five Wesendonck Lieder and Prelude and "Love-Death" from Tristan und Isolde for soprano plus piano quartet raises fascinating performance possibilities. Shorn of their orchestral forces, the transcriptions make the works available for chamber-sized ensembles, and one imagines hearing all manner of polyphonic lines and harmonic details with amazing clarity.In that regard, this recording of pianist/composer Christian Favre's transcriptions of Mahler and Wagner by soprano Felicity Lott and the Quatuor Schumann does not disappoint. Start with the Tristan Prelude: though one at first misses the orchestral colors, the intensity and lucidity of the French ensemble's playing amply compensates for the loss. But the group's performance is compromised by English soprano Felicity Lott. One of the great English sopranos of the later years of the twentieth century, Lott's voice was not nearly what it had been when this recording was made in 2007. Here, Lott's tone is less luxurious and more restrained, her technique less virtuosic and more cautious, and her colors less nuanced and more brazen. Though her voice is still lovely in quieter passages, Lott seems to be straining in the climaxes. Thus, while the evanescent coda of Mahler's "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" sounds suitably ethereal, the climaxes of his "Um Mitternacht" and Wagner's "Love-Death" seem weak, even puny. Captured in close, vivid sound by Aeon, this recording is worth hearing by anyone who already loves these works and is looking for fascinating new ways to perform them. But while they might be impressed by Favre's arrangements and the Quatuor Schumann's performances, they might also wish a different soprano had been engaged.© TiVo
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Wagner: Parsifal by Hans Knappertsbusch

Hans Knappertsbusch

Opera - Released February 8, 2023 | Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording

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Wagner: Parsifal, WWV 111

Hans Knappertsbusch

Opera - Released July 26, 2007 | Orfeo

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Wagner: Parsifal

Evgeny Nikitin

Opera - Released February 1, 2012 | PentaTone

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Parsifal is the second installment in Pentatone's ambitious project to record Wagner's ten important operas between in 2011 and 2013 in celebration of the bicentennial of his birth, featuring live concert performances with Marek Janowski leading Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and Rundfunkchor Berlin. Janowski is an old hand at Wagner, having conducted the first (and very fine) digital recording of The Ring, and he brings a sure understanding and unified conception to Parsifal. One of its most immediately noticeable characteristics is its urgency, which essentially means faster tempos. His version at three and three-quarters hours is nearly a half hour shorter than classic recordings like Knappertsbusch's 1951 Bayreuth version and Solti's Decca release. What's gained is a momentum and sense of dramatic movement in an opera that's notorious for bogged-down performances. It also has the effect of making the opera seem more personal, even intimate at moments, because the momentum gives the dialogue between characters such immediacy. Janowski is sensitive to allowing the music plenty of space to unfold where it calls for evoking a timeless expansiveness, such as the scenes in the Hall of the Grail. The orchestra and chorus perform with seamless assurance and with a velvety sensuality. Janowski keeps textures transparent so that details of the scoring are easily audible, and that transparency also contributes to the intimacy of his reading. The exemplary vocal performances are uniformly very fine, and the singers bring an acute sense of drama to their roles and their interactions The recording is blessed with a wealth of expressive, resonant, tonally sumptuous, and clearly differentiated low voices, including Evgeny Nikitin as Amfortas, Dimitry Ivashchenko as Titurel, Franz-Josef Selig as Gurnemanz, and Eike Wilm Schulte as Klingsor. Christian Elsner is a passionate Parsifal and his ringing tenor is heroic and robust. As Kundry, Michelle DeYoung sings with warmth and poignancy and is especially effective in her rich lower register. The sound of the hybrid multichannel SACD is immaculate and spacious.© TiVo
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Wagner : Parsifal

Herbert von Karajan

Classical - Released January 1, 1981 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Distinctions Gramophone Record of the Year
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Wagner: Orchestral Works by Hans Knappertsbusch

Hans Knappertsbusch

Classical - Released October 27, 2022 | Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording

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Wagner : Parsifal

Herbert Kegel

Opera - Released August 12, 2008 | Brilliant Classics

Distinctions 5 de Diapason
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Wagner Overtures and Preludes

Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Classical - Released August 30, 2019 | Sony Classical - Sony Music

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Leading the Frankfurt Radio orchestra, the hr-Sinfonie Orchester, conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada is performing and recording the great repertoire of symphonic music. His 100% Wagner programme brings together a selection of overtures and preludes. No singing: just orchestral music. Siegfried is absent here, as is the Tetralogia, along with the preludes from the third acts of Parsifal and Lohengrin. But as a whole, the record – a single disc, unlike Marek Janowski's double album for PentaTone – is well-put together.Heading the German outfit, Orozco-Estrada blazes a new path among the operas of the great Builder of Bayreuth. The programme moves through the pieces in chronological order of composition. The Flying Dutchman starts the proceedings, followed by Lohengrin and Tristan and Isolde forms a bridge to the high point that is Parsifal. Then the clock turns back, as Tannhäuser leads us on at last to Rienzi. It's a daring move to finish on this work from Wagner's youth! That said, the listener will recognise the value of this precious overture. Of course, in the middle of the score, the rolling snare drums herald the rather pompous tone of the final military march, punctuated with cymbal crashes. But that shouldn't overshadow the passages of great beauty which recall  – and come on, you've just listened to it – Tannhäuser, in particular the combination of the choral pilgrims' motif against a barrage of strings.The Flying Dutchman, the first work to break with opera in the same manner as Meyerbeer, greets us in medias res, in Wagner's dramatic laboratory, where wonderful worlds are born. Impeccable brass and agile strings, an interplay of finely-balanced volumes, structures and textures: the orchestra buffets the Dutchman, sets Lohengrin aflame, rumbles around Tannhäuser and demonstrates how these pages contain all the ingredients – thematic, dramatic, lyrical – of the drama, in embryo. We will wait faithfully for a complete Wagner with these superb musicians in the pit! © Elsa Siffert/Qobuz
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Wagnermania

Orchestre national d'île-de-France

Opera - Released January 22, 2021 | NoMadMusic

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The Golden Ring: Great Scenes from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen

Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra

Classical - Released October 28, 2022 | Decca Music Group Ltd.

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Georg Solti's recording of Wagner's Ring Cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic and a galaxy of star singers, made between 1958 and 1965, has twice (by Gramophone magazine and the BBC) been called the greatest recording ever made. Among opera fans, a notoriously fractious bunch, there is, of course, debate over this, but no one considers it anything other than a stupendous engineering achievement. It is probably the only opera recording where an engineer is credited in the blurb title; Decca refers to it as the "Solti Culshaw Decca recording," in honor of original engineer John Culshaw, for whom no detail was too small to be attended. Decca is reissuing the original operas in 2022 and 2023, together with the present single-disc set of excerpts. For audiophile listeners, this will be pretty much essential, and the booklet is full of fascinating details about the sound (the Sofiensaal in Vienna, which Decca used as its studio for many years, was a former bathhouse -- the Sofienbad -- and its acoustics were due to "not just the high-vaulted ceiling of the original baths but also because the pool was covered over, creating a cavity beneath the floor and stage area"). Even after almost 65 years, these early stereo recordings sound great; the brass pop and the singers are very sharply defined. Those singers -- Kirsten Flagstad, Hans Hotter, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Christa Ludwig, Joan Sutherland, and the list goes on and on -- still leave one wondering who is going to fill their shoes. This is a remastering from the original tapes that has sharpened the sound still further; a good deal of restoration work was done, including baking some tapes at 55 degrees Celsius. A nice touch is the reproduction of the cheesy original album art. The bottom line is that this recording is not only for audiophiles but also for anyone wanting a single-album summary of the Ring; sample the famous numbers, like the "Ride of the Valkyries," Siegfried's horn, and perhaps the final number from Götterdämmerung, which ties some of the cycle together, and one gets a glimmer of what Wagner is really all about. © James Manheim /TiVo
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Bach Motets

Solomon's Knot

Classical - Released June 16, 2023 | Prospero Classical

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Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer, WWV 63 (Live)

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

Opera - Released March 14, 2006 | Orfeo

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone Editor's Choice
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Bach : St Matthew Passion (Matthäus-Passion)

René Jacobs

Masses, Passions, Requiems - Released October 7, 2013 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Choc de Classica - Choc Classica de l'année