Richard Wagner
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Wagner: Tristano E Isotta
$25.99CDMONDO MUSICA
Apr 30, 20262929816MMB -
Richard Wagner: Parsifal arranged for two pianos
$16.99CDMusicaphon
Apr 30, 2026M56601 -
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Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (Live)
CD$112.99$101.69Delos
May 15, 2026DE 3624 -
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Wagner: Parsifal / Vinay, Mödl, Knappertsbusch, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Wieland Wagner's production of Parsifal was performed at the Bayreuth Festival every year from 1951 to 1973. This makes it the longest-running production of Parsifal on the Bayreuth programme following the world premiere of 1882, which ran until 1933. Wagner’s opera opened the first post-war festival on the 30th of July, 1951, the day after the former Bayreuthian Wilhelm Furtwängler had performed Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
REVIEWS:
Hans Knappertsbusch led Wagner’s Parisfal at the Bayreuth Festival in 1951 and 1952, and then annually from 1954 through 1964. For some reason his August 16, 1955 performance has never surfaced on CD until now, and it’s one of Kna’s stronger Parsifals.
Tempos are generally faster and more fluid than in the commercial 1951 recording. Compare the Act 1 Prelude’s Grail theme and the Transformation music, the Act 2 Flowermaiden’s scene, and the Act 3 Good Friday Spell in both recordings, and you’ll hear what I mean. Furthermore, Act 1’s recalcitrant bells had been replaced by 1955 with an electronic version that was reliable in intonation yet made less sonorous and majestic an impact.
One can argue that 1955’s cast is the most consistently satisfying out of all the Kna Bayreuth Parsifals, with no weak links. Ludwig Weber reprises his distinctive and lieder-like Gurnemanz from 1951. Hermann Uhde’s heavy voice is better suited to Titurel’s gravitas here than Klingsor’s malevolence in 1951. 1955 features Gustav Neidlinger’s Klingsor, which is as riveting a piece of vocal acting as his legendary Alberich in Das Rheingold.
Ramón Vinay sings rather than barks the title role, and the unforced lyricism of his top notes seems to spur on Martha Mödl to deliver her best all-around Act 2 Kundry. True, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s Amfortas abounds with sibilantly snarling consonants, but he’s in fresher, more agile voice than in his 1972 studio Amfortas under Georg Solti.
-- ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)
Wintersturme - Concert with Excerpts from Wagner`s "The Ring of the Nibelung"
Christian Thielemann on Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung “From 2006 to 2010, I spent some 300 hours in the orchestra pit in Bayreuth just on the Ring… Each year I looked forward to this task anew, and I am by no means of the opinion that I have completely finished with it. The Ring is so multifaceted musically that it can never exhaust one’s curiosity and one’s urge to explore further. In the Ring, the conductor feels like a battery that is permanently being recharged. That’s because of the contrasting worlds you move through for 15 whole hours, and the four highly different temperaments of the tetralogy. The orchestra is gigantic, with contrabassoon, bass tuba and eight horns – yet how nuanced and differentiated Wagner’s handling of this machine is!... As I see it, then, the Ring cuts a swathe through “the German sound”, it shows its extremes and its facets, from light and playful to heavy, serious and fraught with meaning. The German sound, Wagner teaches us, is never only the one thing and never just the other. Holländer, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan, Meistersinger: when he comes to the Ring, Wagner starts again from scratch. In its compositional technique, in its treatment of the orchestra, in terms of its dimensions, harmonically, everything is different. When he composed the Ring, Wagner had no orchestra at his disposal to test whether what he imagined actually worked. Everything was playing out in his head. When he finally heard it in 1876, he did alter a thing or two – and would undoubtedly have liked to make even more alterations later. Not that I see any point in speculating about it. We have to address ourselves to the work as it is, and that task is hard enough.”
Wagner: Siegfried / Rattle, Bavarian Radio Symphony
Following the 2015 release of "The Rhinegold" – the Vorabend or „preliminary evening“ of Richard Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" – and of "The Valkyrie" in 2019, BR-KLASSIK is now releasing "Siegfried" as the second day of the enthusiastically received tetralogy under Sir Simon Rattle - recorded live on February 3 and 5, 2023 at Munich's Isarphilharmonie im Gasteig.
With "The Rheingold", Rattle had already decisively refuted the longstanding claim that he and Wagner were not a good match, and with "The Walküre", he dispelled any remaining doubts. His recent performance of “Siegfried” – with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and a first-class lineup of Wagner singers – proves yet again how well the conductor understands and is able to interpret Wagner's music. Now, just a few months after the live event, this powerful and immensely popular music drama is released on three CDs.
Wagner's "Siegfried" tells the story of how the hero forges his own sword, gains invulnerability by slaying the dragon and bathing in its blood, and finally conquers Brünnhilde. The outstanding soloists include Simon O'Neill (Siegfried), Peter Hoare (Mime), Michael Volle (The Wanderer/Wotan), and Anja Kampe (Brünnhilde). Moreover, orchestral highlights of "Siegfried" such as the lyrical "Forest Murmurs" or the prelude to Act Three are brilliantly performed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. As Simon Rattle says: “'Siegfried' contains some of the most dramatic, richly-coloured and enchanting music Wagner ever wrote. I am looking forward immensely to the continuation of our 'Ring', together with the greatest singers one could ever wish for.”
Someone Who Knows No Fear – Backstage with Wagner-tenor Klau
Wagner: Tristano E Isotta
Richard Wagner: Parsifal arranged for two pianos
Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (Live)
Wolfgang Sawallisch: Complete Symphonic, Lieder & Choral Recordings - Warner Classics Edition, Vol. 1
La Divina - The Best of Maria Callas
Otto Klemperer: The Complete Operas & Sacred Works - Warner Classics Edition
BARENBOIM: COMPLETE WAGNER OPERAS
FAVOURITE OVERTURES & PRELUDES
Wagner: Highlights From "the Ring" / Mehta, New York Po
Complete Works For Piano
Wagner: Götterdammerung / Nilsson, Knappertsbusch, Bavarian State Orchestra
WAGNER, R.: Tristan und Isolde / Tannhauser / Die Walküre (F
Wagner e Venezia
Wagner: Wesendonk Lieder & Orchesterstücke
S. Wagner: Schwarzschwanenreich (Realm of the Black Swan) / Bach, Lukic, Thuringian SO
Schwarzschwanenreich ("Realm of the Black Swan") is that dark chamber of the human psyche in which a woman is driven by guilt and shame to kill her own illegitimate child. She is execrated by a cruel, intolerant society, and even the love of a good man cannot save her from the flames, although it does reconcile her to her fate.
Siegfried Wagner had all the basic skills needed to conceive a viable operatic plot and put together a serviceable libretto. The plot can obviously be linked with that of many operas whose heroines are in some sense outsiders, from Euryanthe to Elektra, and in 1910, when Schwarzschwanenreich was written, it could almost have been taken as a bid to wrest the high ground of expressionistic melodrama from such wild radicals as Schoenberg, not to mention the more conventional Zemlinsky or Schreker. Wresting the high ground was not Siegfried Wagner's way, however, and the leisurely lyricism of the opera's Prelude, harmonically constrained and rhythmically flaccid, gives notice that he prefers the happy endings of fairy tales to the harsh resolutions of tragedy. As with his first opera, Der Beirenhiriuter, the livelier scenes work best. There's a shameless rip-off of Hagen's vassalsummoning (GOtterddmmerung) in Act 1, and some strong moments of confrontation and recrimination later on, but even these tend to run out of steam, and attempts to modulate to a more elevated tone are at best bland and at worst banal.
Most of the Thuringian team throw themselves uninhibitedly into the piece. Kerstin Quandt is too restrained a villainess, but Beth Johanning and Walter Raffeiner, as the unfortunate heroine and her honest but ineffective lover, work through moments of vocal bluster to achieve some robustly ardent characterization. The recording strikes a reasonable balance between voices and orchestra, and the conductor sustains as high a level of dramatic engagement as the patchy score permits. The libretto included is in German only, but there is a detailed English synopsis.
-- Gramophone [11/1995]
Wagner: Highlights From The Operas Arranged For Two Pianos
Wagner: Der Fliegende Höllander / Steinberg, Muff, Haubold, Seiffert, Knodt
The Story Of Wagner
Includes work(s) by Richard Wagner.
