Your basket is empty

Categories:
Narrow my search:

Results 1 to 20 out of a total of 5903
From
CD$19.77

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde, WWV 90

Vienna State Opera Orchestra

Opera - Released May 6, 2022 | Orfeo

Booklet
Although the premiere in 1865 was not to be at Vienna State Opera but at Munich’s court theatre (June 10th), Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was performed more than 400 times at the House on the Ring since its premier in 1883. This live recording from June 2013 under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst presents Nina Stemme as Isolde – her debut in that role at Vienna State Opera –, Peter Seiffert as Tristan (who was honoured Kammersänger of the Vienna State Opera the same month the recording was made), Jochen Schmeckenbecher as Kurwenal, Stephen Milling as König Marke and Janina Baechle as Brangäne. © Orfeo
From
HI-RES$19.77$24.71(20%)
CD$11.86$19.77(40%)

Wagner: Siegfried, WWV 86C

Simon O´Neill

Opera - Released September 22, 2023 | BR-Klassik

Hi-Res Booklets
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
From
HI-RES$24.71
CD$19.77

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
From
HI-RES$24.71
CD$19.77

Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer, WWV 63 (Live)

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

Opera - Released March 14, 2006 | Orfeo

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone Editor's Choice
From
CD$19.77

Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75 (Live)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Opera - Released November 3, 2017 | Orfeo

From
CD$19.77

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
From
HI-RES$27.99
CD$22.39

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
From
HI-RES$26.49
CD$18.99

The Wagner Project

Matthias Goerne

Classical - Released November 24, 2017 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet
From
CD$19.77

Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75 (Live)

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

Opera - Released July 28, 2006 | Orfeo

From
HI-RES$24.71
CD$19.77

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

Stephen Gould

Opera - Released September 1, 2012 | PentaTone

Hi-Res Booklet
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
From
HI-RES$24.70
CD$19.76

Wagner: Overtures, Preludes & Aria by André Cluytens

André Cluytens

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

Hi-Res
From
CD$19.77

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
From
CD$12.45

Nina Stemme sings Wagner (Live 2003-2013)

Nina Stemme

Opera Extracts - Released November 17, 2017 | Orfeo

Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason - 5 étoiles de Classica
These are on-stage live recordings of various great Wagnerian moments of the great Swedish dramatic soprano Nina Stemme (born in 1963) made between 2003 and 2013, right during the opera singer’s time of glory, at the prime of her ability – it’s worth pointing out that a dramatic soprano’s voice, as opposed to a “classic” lyric soprano, reaches her full prime rather late in her musical life, considering the extravagant muscular stress required for the roles of Isolde, Sieglinde or Brünnhilde. The orchestra of the Vienna State Opera is conducted by either Seiji Ozawa or Franz Welser-Möst – at the time when they succeeded each other as Music Director of this honourable and particularly traditionalist institution. And let’s not forget that Nina Stemme won the Plácido Domingo’s Operalia Prize in 1993, and gained international recognition as Isolde at Glyndebourne in 2003, the year of the first recordings presented here. Since then, she has played all the legendary female icons such as Elektra, Turandot, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and many other major roles in Bayreuth. A stellar career fully recognised in this album. © SM/Qobuz
From
CD$15.09

Wagner: Wesendonk Lieder; Tristan & Isolde: Prelude & Liebestod

Jessye Norman

Classical - Released July 1, 1976 | Decca Music Group Ltd.

From
CD$65.25

Wagner: Die Walkure (1953)

Ramón Vinay

Classical - Released February 1, 2015 | Myto Historical

From
CD$31.29

Pierre Boulez Edition: Mahler & Wagner

Pierre Boulez

Classical - Released January 29, 2016 | Sony Classical

From
HI-RES$16.59
CD$14.39

Nicholas Angelich: Hommage

Nicholas Angelich

Classical - Released September 1, 2023 | Warner Classics

Hi-Res Distinctions Diapason d'or
Pianist Nicholas Angelich, even more admired in Europe than in his native U.S., passed away tragically early in 2022 at the age of 51. One way to look at this Hommage is to note that it took quite a bit of research power, much of it apparently donated, to put together this massive seven-volume tribute, assembled from live performances and radio broadcasts between 1995 and 2019. That is a lot of Angelich, but fans here will find much that sheds new light on his genius. Consider the Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 24, which Angelich rarely played in concert. It receives a wonderfully controlled performance in which the tricky architecture of this work comes to the surface. Angelich was a fine virtuoso, and the Liszt Transcendental Etudes and the big Russian works generally have a layer of excitement added by the live performance. However, Angelich is equally effective in subtler pieces, thoughtful in the likes of Zemlinsky and the Bach Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, where the sequence of events feels somewhat different from in the pianist's 2011 studio recording even as the über-Romantic slow tempos are retained. His opening aria is even slower than on the studio version. The mastering of these immensely diverse sound sources from Erato is as good as such a thing can be, and physical album buyers get some fine reflections on the pianist's work. This is, in short, an effective tribute to a pianist whose life and work were brutally cut short.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$16.59
CD$14.39

Klemperer Conducts Wagner: Overtures & Preludes

Otto Klemperer

Classical - Released August 25, 2023 | Warner Classics

Hi-Res
From
HI-RES$24.70
CD$19.76

David & Jonathas

Gaétan Jarry

Classical - Released June 9, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

Hi-Res Booklet