Wagner - Operatic Highlights / R Strauss - Tone Poems, Metamorphosen
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Label: EMI
Cat No: 2484682
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 5
Release Date: 4th March 2013
Contents
Works
Don Juan, op.20Metamorphosen
Salome, op.54
Tod und Verklarung (Death and Transfiguration), op.24
Das Rheingold
Siegfried
Artists
Helga DerneschWilliam Cochran
Hans Sotin
Norman Bailey (baritone)
Christa Ludwig (mezzo-soprano)
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Philharmonia Orchestra
Conductor
Otto KlempererWorks
Don Juan, op.20Metamorphosen
Salome, op.54
Tod und Verklarung (Death and Transfiguration), op.24
Das Rheingold
Siegfried
Artists
Helga DerneschWilliam Cochran
Hans Sotin
Norman Bailey (baritone)
Christa Ludwig (mezzo-soprano)
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Philharmonia Orchestra
Conductor
Otto KlempererAbout
Ambivalent is the word which best describes Klemperer’s feelings about Germany’s two great musical Richards, Wagner and Strauss. During his early years as an opera conductor in Germany, Klemperer conducted a modicum of Strauss and a good deal of Wagner, though from the outset it was clear that he was never going to be an unthinking fan of either.
The music of both composers did, nonetheless, cast its spell. Recording Act 1 of Wagner’s Die Walküre in London in 1969 was, he said, like meeting a woman he had loved 40 years ago and discovering that she was much as she had always been. He went on: ‘I find the music thrilling. Thrilling! One can say this or that about Wagner, but no one else could have written that music. No one! It’s as stupid to underestimate Wagner as it is to overestimate him. He doesn’t need either’.
Klemperer’s attitude to the operas of Richard Strauss was no less mixed. He thrilled to Salome, which even as an old man he considered to be one of the twentieth century’s most original scores, revered Elektra, and took great delight in Ariadne auf Naxos. On the other hand, he found too much ‘sugar-water’ in Der Rosenkavalier and was baffled by Die Frau ohne Schatten of which he conducted a handful of performances in Cologne in 1919.
The Strauss work which had first impressed Klemperer – he was 15 at the time – was Tod und Verklärung. What struck the young enthusiast was the quality of the orchestration and the remorselessness of the build-up of the thematic material, qualities Klemperer would later bring to his own reading of a work which does indeed advance implacably towards its sought-for goal: the soul’s transfiguration as memories of childhood visions and unattained artistic ideals grandly mingle.
Knowing the man as he did, Klemperer experienced few difficulties in coming to terms with Strauss’s equivocations during the Nazi era. As the Second World War drew towards its close, Strauss began working on Metamorphosen, a threnody for 23 solo strings born of the trauma of wartime cultural loss: the Goethe house destroyed, Dresden, Munich, Weimar all in ruins. ‘Basically quite nice’ was Klemperer’s laconic comment on the piece, yet no one was more eager to conduct it, an ambition he realised in Budapest in March 1948. Klemperer’s coupling of Metamorphosen with Tod und Verklärung on an LP first released in 1962 was widely welcomed as one of the finest of all his late recordings.
Contents:
CD 1 [79.18]
Richard Wagner
Rienzi
1. Overture
Recorded: 1960
Tannhäuser
2. Overture
Recorded: 1960
3. Act 3: Prelude
Recorded: 1960-1963
Lohengrin
4. Act 1: Prelude
Recorded: 1960
5. Act 3: Prelude
Recorded: 1960
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
6. Act 1: Prelude
Recorded: 1960
7. Act 3: Dance of the Apprentices & Entry of the Masters
Recorded: 1960
Parsifal
8. Act 1: Prelude
Recorded: 1961-1963
Philharmonia Orchestra
Recorded: Kingsway Hall, London
CD 2 [78.57]
Der fliegende Holländer
1. Overture
Recorded: 1960
Das Rheingold
2. Scene 4: Entry of the Gods into Valhalla
Recorded: 1961-1963
Die Walküre
3. Act 3: The Ride of the Valkyries
Recorded: 1960-1963
4. Siegfried Idyll
Recorded: 1961
Siegfried
5. Act 2: Forest Murmurs
Recorded: 1961-1963
Götterdämmerung
6. Interlude: Siegfried’s Rhine Journey
Recorded: 1960
7. Act 3: Siegfried’s Funeral March
Recorded: 1960-1963
Tristan und Isolde
8. Act 1: Prelude & Act 3: Liebestod
Recorded: 1960
Philharmonia Orchestra
Recorded: Kingsway Hall, London
CD 3 [71.40]
Die Walküre
Act 1
1. Prelude (Orchestra)
2. Wes Herd dies auch sei, hier muß ich rasten (Siegmund/Sieglinde)
3. Einen Unseligen labtest du (Siegmund/Sieglinde)
4. Mud am Herd fand ich den Mann (Sieglinde/Hunding/Siegmund)
5. Friedmund darf ich nicht heißen (Siegmund/Hunding/Sieglinde)
6. Die so leidig Los dir beschied (Hunding/Sieglinde/Siegmund)
7. Ich weiß ein wildes Geschlecht (Hunding)
8. Ein Schwert verhieß mir der Vater (Siegmund)
9. Schläfst du, Gast? (Sieglinde/Siegmund)
10. Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond (Siegmund)
11. Du bist der Lenz (Sieglinde)
12. O süßeste Wonne! (Siegmund/Sieglinde)
13. Siegmund heiß’ ich (Siegmund)
Cast:
Sieglinde: Helga Dernesch
Siegmund: William Cochran
Hunding: Hans Sotin
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Recorded: 1969 and 1970, All Saints’ Church, Tooting, London
CD 4 [76.30]
Die Walküre
1. Leb’ wohl, du kühnes, herrliches Kind! (Wotans Abschied, Act III)
Norman Bailey (baritone)
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Recorded: 1970, All Saints’ Church, Tooting, London
Wesendonck-Lieder (orch. Mottl)
2. I. Der Engel
3. II. Stehe still!
4. III. Im Treibhaus
5. IV. Schmerzen
6. V. Träume
Tristan und Isolde
7. Mild und leise (Isoldes Liebestod, Act III) 6.48
Christa Ludwig (mezzo-soprano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Recorded: 1962, Kingsway Hall, London
Richard Strauss
8. Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings
Philharmonia Orchestra
Recorded: 1961, Kingsway Hall, London
CD 5 [64.05]
1. Don Juan Op.20
Recorded: 1960
2. Tod und Verklärung Op.24
Recorded: 1961
Salome Op.54
3. Dance of the Seven Veils
Recorded: 1960
4. Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche Op.28
Recorded: 1960
Philharmonia Orchestra
Recorded: Kingsway Hall, London
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