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Wagner: Parsifal, WWV 111

Martha Modl

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

Booklet
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

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 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

Hi-Res Booklet
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 : Parsifal

Herbert Kegel

Opera - Released August 12, 2008 | Brilliant Classics

Distinctions 5 de Diapason
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The Wagner Project

Matthias Goerne

Classical - Released November 24, 2017 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet
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Bach : Johannes-Passion, BWV 245

Philippe Herreweghe

Classical - Released February 7, 2020 | Phi

Hi-Res Booklet
Bach’s St. John Passion, with its famous opening chorus traversed by shadows and light, is a powerful musical and spiritual reflection. Dramatic, grandiose, complex, resolutely theatrical: there has been no lack of superlatives to describe this supreme masterpiece of western music. Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent present an accomplished reading that reflects their knowledge of the composer, based on extensive research and deepened by countless concerts. Soloists Krešimir Stražanac and Maximilian Schmitt demonstrate the breadth of their talents in the roles of Jesus and the Evangelist. © Phi
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Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer, WWV 63 (Live)

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

Opera - Released July 27, 2018 | Opus Arte

Booklet
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Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier

Leonard Bernstein

Classical - Released July 11, 2014 | Sony Classical

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Wagner: Die Walkure (1953)

Ramón Vinay

Classical - Released February 1, 2015 | Myto Historical

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Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75 (Recorded Live 2011)

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

Classical - Released June 22, 2018 | Opus Arte

Booklet
Recorded live at a performance in Bayreuth on 14 August 2011, this Lohengrin naturally benefits a lot from the place's amazing sound; the listener will surely forgive the little noises from around the stage or hall: it is, after all, a very small price to pay for having a front-row seat at a live performance, and with the element of risk – taken by the singers, at least – which heightens the experience. The production brings together some of the greatest voices of the day, led by the tenor Klaus Florian Vogt, a real free radical, who started his career as... horn player in the Hamburg Philharmonic! But soon he heard the call of the lyrical, and he began a superb career as a tenor, first lighter, in Mozartian roles, and then more powerful with Wagner and the roles of the young "Heldentenor." As Elsa, we have Annette Dasch, who had already made a much-remarked-upon début in Bayreuth the year before – also as Elsa. Bass Heinrich Zeppenfeld is following the same Bayreuth trajectory, as King Henry the Fowler. The ambiguous Ortrud is played by Petra Lang, who since moved on to play Isolde, also at Bayreuth, a few years later – a fine rendition. © SM/Qobuz
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Wagner: Die Walküre

Georg Solti

Classical - Released October 14, 1997 | Decca Music Group Ltd.

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Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben - Bach: Cantatas BWV 6-99-147

Collegium Vocale Gent

Classical - Released September 1, 2023 | Phi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 4F de Télérama
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Richard Wagner: Famous Opera Scenes

Nikolai Lugansky

Classical - Released March 8, 2024 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet
It shouldn't take listeners long to get over the novelty of hearing Wagner on the piano. After all, piano transcriptions were the primary way opera, in general, and Wagner specifically, were spread around Europe in the 19th century, and the composer's primary champion in this medium was none other than the greatest pianist of the age, Franz Liszt. Liszt's own transcription of the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde is the pièce de résistance on this release by pianist Nikolai Lugansky; it is not terribly often played, and it has lost none of its imposing scope over the decades. Lugansky leads up to this with transcriptions by Louis Brassin, upon which Lugansky has elaborated, and with a quartet of transcriptions from Götterdämmerung that come from his own hand. These are quite artfully done, incorporating the familiar leitmotifs of the Ring cycle while filling them in with technically fearsome connective tissue. Lugansky has done nothing less than put the listener in the place of an audience that might have heard Liszt play Wagner in the composer's own day, and ideal sound from the small Scuola della Carità reproduces the aristocratic Paris salons where Liszt would often have held forth. A bold, fresh release from Lugansky that made classical best-seller lists in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo
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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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Strauss: Ein Heldenleben - Mahler: Rückert-Lieder

Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal

Classical - Released March 15, 2024 | PentaTone

Hi-Res Booklet
The Strauss and Mahler works on this 2024 release are both relatively often recorded, and listeners may have been surprised to see the album show up on classical best-seller lists in the spring of that year. There is the consideration that Rafael Payare and his abundant Afro are landing on many lists of acts to watch, and he shows signs of jelling with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal in the Richard Strauss autobiographical tone poem Ein Heldenleben. Hear the superb solo work from violinist Andrew Wan in the third movement, representing Strauss' wife, Pauline de Ahna, but the big news here, and what is probably drawing buyers, is the other work on the album, Mahler's Rückert-Lieder, which receive a revelatory performance from soprano Sonya Yoncheva. It is a distinctly different flavor from the usual Wagnerian sound, adding operatic emotionalism to Um Mitternacht and the gorgeous finale, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. Yoncheva was an inspired choice, whether by Payare or someone else, and the album is worth time and money for her alone. The PentaTone label adds nicely transparent sound from the Maison Symphonique de Montréal to the mix.© James Manheim /TiVo