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Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

Stephen Gould

Opera - Released September 1, 2012 | PentaTone

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As the conductor for PentaTone's ambitious project to record all of Richard Wagner's music dramas, Marek Janowski has delivered a fine live concert version of Tristan und Isolde that has received critical praise for its strong cast and extraordinary sound quality. Janowski draws out some exciting playing from the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the multichannel super audio recording gives the ensemble the depth and fullness that is absolutely vital in Wagner's richly scored music. The cast is assured and vocally capable, but the star is soprano Nina Stemme, whose Isolde is vividly rendered and strong enough to carry the performance through to the Liebestod, setting standards of expressive power and stamina for the other singers to match. Considering the difficulty in finding vocalists who can handle Wagner's demanding roles, the performances by Stephen Gould as Tristan, Johan Reuter as Kurwenal, and Kwangchul Youn as King Mark are certainly better than average, and satisfying for the purposes of this concert performance. While this recording does not rank among historic Tristans for the thrills of a fully staged production, or for any legendary artists in the main roles, this is still an admirable effort that promises even greater things for the remainder of PentaTone's series.© TiVo
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Wagner: Overtures, Preludes & Aria by André Cluytens

André Cluytens

Classical - Released January 23, 2022 | Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording

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Richard Wagner: Famous Opera Scenes

Nikolai Lugansky

Classical - Released March 8, 2024 | harmonia mundi

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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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Klemperer Conducts Wagner: Overtures & Preludes

Otto Klemperer

Classical - Released August 25, 2023 | Warner Classics

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Wagner by Otto Klemperer: The Ring Without Words, Wesendonck Lieder, Overtures, Preludes

Otto Klemperer

Classical - Released November 24, 2021 | Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording

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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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The Wagner Project

Matthias Goerne

Classical - Released November 24, 2017 | harmonia mundi

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Wagner: Extraits orchestraux

Otto Klemperer

Classical - Released September 2, 2002 | Warner Classics

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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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Wagner: Preludes and Interludes

Philharmonia Zürich

Symphonies - Released February 16, 2015 | Philharmonia Records - Opernhaus Zürich

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Pierre Boulez Edition: Mahler & Wagner

Pierre Boulez

Classical - Released January 29, 2016 | Sony Classical

Ouvertures et Préludes

Neeme Järvi

Classical - Released September 1, 2013 | Chandos

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Wagner: Parsifal, Der Fliegende Holländer, Die Meistersinger, & Tristan und Isolde

Anja Kampe

Classical - Released May 7, 2007 | Halle Concerts Society

This is old-fashioned, hot-blooded Wagner, with plenty of passion, lots of power, and, best of all, flowing tempos. One might have thought that the only way to get such performances these days one would have to pull out aging Furtwängler recordings, but in fact these performances are by Mark Elder with Manchester's Hallé orchestra. And though the accounts here might not be quite in the same league as Furtwängler's with the Berliner or Wiener Philharmoniker, this 2009 disc is still supremely -- and for its time -- uniquely beautiful. As they've amply demonstrated in their earlier recordings of Elgar and Strauss, Elder and the Hallé have forged an exemplary musical partnership especially adept at hyper-expressive late-Romantic music. And with its aching emotionality, probing spirituality, and thrusting sensuality, there is no late-Romantic music more hyper-expressive than Wagner's. Here, Elder and the Hallé pour on the lush colors, the rich textures, and the warm tone in excerpts from Parsifal, Der fliegende Holländer, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Tristan und Isolde, the latter with the heart-quickening contribution of soprano Anja Kampe. But, as noted above, the best thing about Elder's interpretations are the tempos. Effortlessly flowing and endlessly supple but inevitable, Elder's Wagner sounds utterly natural, completely unaffected, and absolutely right. Anyone who has been following Elder and the Hallé's later recordings will surely want to hear this disc, along with everyone who reveres Wagner's music. © TiVo
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Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (Acts II & III) [Live]

Staatskapelle Berlin

Opera - Released April 9, 2012 | Andromeda

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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