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Parsifal

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra

Classical - Released May 29, 2011 | Challenge Classics

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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 by Hans Knappertsbusch

Hans Knappertsbusch

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

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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

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: Siegfried, WWV 86C

Simon O´Neill

Opera - Released September 22, 2023 | BR-Klassik

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Taken from several live performances at the Gasteig in Munich in early 2023, this recording of Wagner's Siegfried made classical best-seller charts later that year. It is part of a series that began in 2016, intending to record the entire Ring Cycle live. The recordings have all been successful, and this is testimony to the skills of conductor Simon Rattle. There are conductors' Wagner performances, and there are singers' Wagner performances. This is the former. The Bavarian Radio Symphony seizes the listener's attention from the opening bell, and the energy never flags. There is nothing objectionable about the singers, but few of them will stick in one's head. The exception, perhaps, is soprano Anja Kampe as Brunnhilde (and Danae Kontora as the Voice of the Forest Bird); Kampe, of course, doesn't enter until the end, but at that point, everything comes together for a really thrilling conclusion of "radiant love, laughing death." Although these were live performances, they might just as well have been made in a studio; Bavarian Radio's engineering in its hometown is superbly detailed, and the audience discipline is awesome (no applause or other crowd noise of any kind is retained). There is a liveliness to Rattle's Wagner that sets it apart from performances in the German tradition, and it is fully on display in this recording.© James Manheim /TiVo
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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 : Parsifal

Herbert Kegel

Opera - Released August 12, 2008 | Brilliant Classics

Distinctions 5 de Diapason
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Wagner: Siegfried, WWV 86C & Parsifal, WWV 111 (Excerpts) [Live]

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Opera - Released February 4, 2022 | Profil

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The recordings here by Martha Mödl from 1955 document not only her impeccable rendering of the German, but also her singular singing status. She started out as a mezzo-soprano, but in 1949, with her first Kundry, she switched to the vocal range midway between mezzo and dramatic soprano, and in March 1952 she sang her first Brünnhilde. She was there from the very start in Neubayreuth: From 1951 to 1955, Mödl sang Kundry in all of the Parsifal performances and only began alternating with Astrid Varnay from 1956. She was also cast in the Ring from 1951, first as Gutrune and the Third Norn, and from 1953 also as Brünnhilde and in 1954 as Sieglinde as well. There, too, she alternated with Varnay, who had been performing almost without pause as Brünnhilde since 1951. Mödl sang Isolde in 1952 and 1953. To the director Wieland Wagner she was a “high dramatic soprano free of pathos”. He valued the way her “voice, personality and performance formed an absolutely inseparable whole”. Her stage presence can no longer be experienced through the recordings, but the vocal penetration of the roles can be. © Profil
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Wagner: Parsifal, WWV 111

Hans Knappertsbusch

Opera - Released July 26, 2007 | Orfeo

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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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Delius: A Mass of Life

Frederick Delius

Classical - Released November 24, 2023 | Lawo Classics

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The most popular works by Frederick Delius, like Summer Night on the River and On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring are orchestral tone poems with a British tinge, seeming to offer a British counterpart to Debussy's Impressionism. Eine Messe des Lebens ("A Mass of Life") has little that is British about it at all unless it be a general commonality of mood with the vast spectaculars written for England's choral festivals. This work has had its champions, including Sir Thomas Beecham, but it has rarely been performed or recorded. The fact that it is in German is one impediment; the work sets texts from Friedrich Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra. Many readers of the day put a grandiose spin on that work; nowadays, it is seen more as lyrical and poetic. The Richard Strauss tone poem based on Also sprach Zarathustra reflects the former view, and so does the Delius work, although it has some almost static mystical passages. There are influences from English choral music, from Wagner, perhaps from Grieg. The work requires a double chorus and a large orchestra; this live performance from Bergen in 2022, with the Bergen Philharmonic, four soloists, and one Norwegian and one English chorus, must have been a logistical challenge. Eine Messe des Lebens (which is in no sense a mass) is something of a beast, but conductor Mark Elder makes a strong case for it. His handling of the large forces is lucid and moves clearly toward goal points, and he balances the choruses, soloists (the principal being baritone Roderick Williams, in fine form), and orchestra well; perhaps the prize should go to the LAWO Classics engineers who kept all these layers clear in a live concert situation. This recording may or may not rescue Eine Messe des Lebens from obscurity, but those interested in Delius, and for that matter in Nietzsche and his reception, should definitely hear it.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75 (Live)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Opera - Released November 3, 2017 | Orfeo

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J.S. Bach : Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244 (Passion selon saint Matthieu)

Philippe Herreweghe

Classical - Released July 31, 2007 | harmonia mundi

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R. Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose), Op. 59, TrV 227

Claire Watson

Classical - Released August 26, 2008 | Orfeo

While nearly universally acclaimed as one of the supreme conductors of the later years of the 20th century, Carlos Kleiber had what could generously be called an extremely select repertoire of pieces. Among his specialties were Strauss operas, and there are five live recordings of Kleiber directing Der Rosenkavalier from the '70s alone, with others potentially waiting to be remastered and released. This Rosenkavalier was recorded in Munich in July 1973 at the Bavarian State Opera, and it is the first and arguably freshest of Kleiber's recordings of the opera. Though rambunctious at first, the audience quickly settles down, and the overall sound is more than acceptable, albeit with some occasional stage noise. The soloists are as good as one could hope for at that period: a youthful Lucia Popp as Sophia, a delightful Brigitte Fassbaender as Octavian, a characterful Karl Ridderbusch as Baron Ochs, and an incandescent Claire Watson as the Feldmarschallin. Kleiber is his usual miraculous self. It's hard to believe one could hear so many details that are so well integrated into the flow of the music and harder to believe that the music could seem so spontaneous yet so sculpted, so effortless, and so relentless. The music is so unified with the drama, and the orchestra so integrated with the voices, that the whole of the performance becomes infinitely greater than the sum of its parts, making this Rosenkavalier truly glorious. © TiVo
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Der ferne Klang... Orchestral Works & Songs by Franz Schreker

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Classical - Released March 17, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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In the early '20s, Franz Schreker was one of the best-known composers in the world. His music was suppressed by the Nazis because he was Jewish, and due to the High Modernism of the postwar period, a second totalitarianism, his reputation did not recover. This was a shame, for Schreker was anything but a conservative, and it is good to see that he is finally getting his due. What he needed at this point was a high-profile recording with top soloists, and that is exactly what he gets here from Christoph Eschenbach and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, with soprano Chen Reiss and baritone Matthias Goerne. Deutsche Grammophon's PR text refers to "Schreker's sumptuous, hyper-Romantic music," but this is not quite right. Schreker could sometimes be that, as in the Romantische Suite that closes the album, but Straussian late Romanticism was only one of his influences. In terms of using tone color as a structural element, Schreker was in every way a contemporary of Schoenberg (his close friend) and Webern. Eschenbach's generous selection of orchestral songs here provides a good way to appreciate this quality; sample Die Dunkelheit sinkt schwer wie Blei from the Fünf Gesänge, with its mysterious strumming-like sounds. The text of that song is from a German translation of the Thousand and One Nights anthology, and Reiss sounds great in the Zwei lyrische Gesänge to texts (in German) by, of all people, Walt Whitman. Schreker could be neoclassic (in the economical Kleine Suite); he could be Impressionist-tinged; he mastered a full Expressionist idiom in the opera that gives the album its title, represented here by a substantial instrumental excerpt. This double-album release conveys the breadth of Schreker's musical language, but he is never blankly eclectic. A wonderful album that will help to rewrite the 20th century canon.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Bach: The Complete Organ Works Vol. 1

Johann Sebastian Bach

Classical - Released October 16, 2015 | Signum Records

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Bach : Johannes-Passion, BWV 245

Philippe Herreweghe

Classical - Released February 7, 2020 | Phi

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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