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Wagner : Tristan und Isolde (Orange, Live 1973)

Karl Böhm

Classical - Released September 7, 2018 | Sony Classical

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The Unreleased Masters

Jessye Norman

Classical - Released March 24, 2023 | Decca Music Group Ltd.

Jessye Norman was always protective of her art and the sound image she projected, no different with these unreleased recordings. However, with the approval of her loved ones, they’re now being released post-mortem.This new release (which is available in a lavish, physical limited edition) features three of Jessye’s recordings done between 1988 and 1998, when she was at the height of her career. There are substantial excerpts from her extraordinary performance of Tristan und Isolde recorded with Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, featuring tenors Thomas Moser (Tristan) and Ian Bostridge (the young sailor) and soprano Hanna Schwarz (Brangäne).The rest of the programme consists of live recordings conducted by James Levine and Seiji Ozawa. With the former, Jessye Norman sings Strauss's Four Last Songs and Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder in a recording that favours orchestral richness to the detriment of the voice. This may explain why the American singer chose never to release this recording, even though her hedonistic interpretation of Strauss's farewell to life is still striking. The album ends with a recital complete with orchestra, tailor-made for the diva in 1994 in Boston. It features two cantatas: Berenice che fai by Haydn and Phaedra, written by Benjamin Britten for Janet Baker. Nestled between the two, you’ll find a stunning rendition of Berlioz's The Death of Cleopatra. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Wagner : Tristan und Isolde, WWV 90

Wolfgang Sawallisch

Full Operas - Released May 18, 2018 | Orfeo

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason
An enemy of fashion and glitz who shunned cocktails and society dinners, Wolfgang Sawallisch was a humble, retiring man whose life was wholly dedicated to music and music alone. Behind what might seem like a well-worn cliché of the "honest man", he was surely one of the greatest artists of his generation. An exceptional pianist, he would sometimes accompany his friend Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau through memorable nights dedicated to Schubert's great cycles. A conductor, he knew the whole repertoire by heart, not only working with an orchestra but also taking to the piano with all the singers. He was a Kapellmeister in the most elevated sense of the term. Between 1971 and 1992 he made his hometown’s Munich Opera (Bayerische Staatsoper) one of the greatest stages in the world, offering performances of an utterly exceptional standard. The gradual seizure of power by producers would put an end to a collaboration which had produced so many unforgettable nights. Sawallisch went on to enjoy a kind of Indian summer as a conductor in his final years, at the head of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he encountered huge success. First and foremost a performer of Wagner, Wolfgang Sawallisch first made his mark on Bayreuth in his youth, when, in 1962, he conducted landmark performances. The archives of the festival are full of recordings which are slowly being released, whose almost-identical distributions on different dates have sown confusion. Sawallisch conducted Tristan and Isolde with the legendary couple Birgit Nilsson/Wolfgang Windgassen several times, for the festivals in 1957, 1958 and 1959, well before the sensational version conducted by Karl Böhm. This new release covers the night of 26 July 1958 (so it is not a cover of the version released by MYTO of the show on 21 August of the same year). The doomed lovers are given an exceptional treatment under the electrifying baton of a young Sawallisch. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

Richard Wagner

Opera - Released January 1, 1999 | Opera d'Oro

This live recording of Tristan und Isolde, from the 1974 Bayreuth Festival, conducted by Carlos Kleiber, is notable for its energy and impetuosity, and its occasionally astonishing speed. Moments that in many performances can sound ponderously momentous here have a fleet recklessness that seems far more appropriate both musically and dramatically. The ending of the Prelude, taken much faster than usual, is a thrilling analog for the heedless passion that's soon to overtake the protagonists. Kleiber holds the singers and orchestra together for his wild ride, and for all his rhythmic flexibility and unpredictability, his reading has a sense of naturalistic inevitability. While this is not a dream cast (the very possibility of assembling such a thing for a performance or recording of Tristan is probably a chimaera), all the soloists are fully convincing dramatically, even if they are not vocally the most memorable singers ever to take on these roles. Catarina Ligendza is an appealingly young-sounding Isolde, and she also has the power to negotiate the role's huge demands. Helge Brilioth's heroic Tristan is sung with strength and fervor. Largely due to Kleiber's vision and his ability to carry his performers along with him, this revelatory performance of Tristan should be of interest to anyone who loves the opera.© TiVo
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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: 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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Franz Liszt: Schubert & Wagner Transcriptions

Jean-Nicolas Diatkine

Classical - Released May 27, 2022 | Solo Musica

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Some of Jean-Nicolas Diatkine's singer friends have ended their careers, but their magic is irreplaceable in his eyes, or rather in his ears. He misses them, just as he misses the Schubert, Schumann and Brahms songs they sang. Well, there is only one person who can compensate for this loss, and his name is Franz Liszt. The main aim of transcriptions was to make orchestral works known to a wider audience, at a time when there were far fewer orchestras, and public access to symphony concerts was very limited. But Liszt gives transcriptions a new meaning: he puts the orchestra into the piano, since his style is particularly suited to outsized extravagance. Thus he opens up unprecedented pianistic possibilities, where virtuosity is no longer mere exhibitionism but rather transformed into the art of illusion. His arrangements of Wagner are so convincing that they become his own personal creations. Laurent Bessières, piano tuner at the Paris Philharmonic, suggested for this recording a Schiedmayer piano of 1916 made in Stuttgart, which he had completely rebuilt in collaboration with Antoine Letessier-Salmon, director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and Stephen Paulello, piano maker and inventor of the strings that bear his name. This instrument has almost never been used in concert, however excellent work by Laurent Bessières convinced us to try it out in this very special repertoire. © solo musica
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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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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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Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer, WWV 63 (Live)

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

Opera - Released July 27, 2018 | Opus Arte

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Schumann: Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6 & Fantasie, Op. 17

Stephen Hough

Classical - Released January 1, 1989 | Warner Classics

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Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder - Tannhäuser - Tristan und Isolde

Anne Schwanewilms

Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released February 3, 2014 | CapriccioNR

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Anne Schwanewilms is one of Germany's leading Wagnerian sopranos, and this 2014 Capriccio album showcases her lyrical voice in three well-known works: Elisabeth's aria, "Dich, teure Halle" from Tannhäuser, the five Wesendonck Lieder, and the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. These are key examples of Wagner's vocal writing, emphasizing the long, through-composed line and the soaring lyricism of his most memorable music. Schwanewilms' light, evenly supported tone, controlled phrasing, and clear diction combine in wonderfully expressive singing that compels listening, even though she doesn't possess a loud or especially commanding voice. One may wish for a little more volume or power, but these pieces really don't require a dramatic soprano voice to be effective. The Overture and Bacchanal from Tannhäuser and the Prelude from Tristan und Isolde are played by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Cornelius Meister, and they are appropriate choices, though to make this a proper vehicle for Schwanewilms' talents, those familiar pieces should have been replaced with either more Wagnerian arias or selections from her performances in the operas of Richard Strauss. However, Wagner lovers will be just as happy to have this album as it is, without any substitutions.© TiVo
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Wagner: Siegfried, WWV 86C

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Opera - Released November 10, 2017 | Naxos

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Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) in China, even Wagner wouldn’t have dared dreaming of that in his greatest phantasmagorias on the Gesamtkunstwerk taking over the world. And yet it’s the work the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra has decided to record, under the lead of its Music Director Jaap van Zweden, over four years of public performances – live recordings, which don’t spoil in any way the liveliness and continuity of the original work. If Wagner had had at his disposal such a talented orchestra, he would have certainly been stunned: in the East, his masterpiece is more than honoured… The stage, albeit not very Eastern (whereas the orchestra is in its overwhelming majority composed of local musicians), features some of today’s most seasoned voices, starting with New Zealander Simon O’Neill as Siegfried, American dramatic soprano Heidi Melton as Brünnhilde, and the outstanding Matthias Goerne as Wotan. The “reference versions” of the past years and decades now have serious reasons to worry about their unquestioned privileged status, even more so as the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra isn’t held to sometimes burdensome traditions: it plays the music as if it had just been composed… © SM/Qobuz
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Wagner: Die Walkure (1953)

Ramón Vinay

Classical - Released February 1, 2015 | Myto Historical

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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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Klemperer Conducts Wagner: Overtures & Preludes

Otto Klemperer

Classical - Released August 25, 2023 | Warner Classics

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For Clara: Works by Schumann & Brahms

Hélène Grimaud

Classical - Released September 8, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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Bach: Cantatas 54, 82 & 170 "Widerstehe", "Ich habe genug" & "Vergnügte Ruh"

Iestyn Davies

Classical - Released December 30, 2016 | Hyperion

Hi-Res Booklet