Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Cast: Gods Norman Bailey bass-baritone - Wotan Norman Welsby baritone - Donner Robert Ferguson tenor - Froh Emile Belcourt tenor - Loge Giants Robert Lloyd bass - Fasolt Clifford Grant bass - Fafner Nibelungs Derek Hammond-Stroud baritone - Alberich Gregory Dempsey tenor - Mime Goddesses Katherine Pring mezzo-soprano - Fricka Lois McDonnall soprano - Freia Anne Collins contralto - Erda Rhinemaidens Valerie Masterson soprano - Woglinde Shelagh Squires mezzo-soprano - Wellgunde Helen Attfield contralto - Flosshilde Recorded in: London Coliseum live; 10, 19, 25 & 29 March 1975 Producer(s) John Mordler Sound Engineer(s) Robert Gooch

Classical Music

Masterly performance of a masterwork: the stuff of legend is finally heard

All together now, "At last!" The famous Goodall Mastersingers makes it on to CD. Yes, it’s in English, which may put some off, but the burnished tone and deep sensitivity of Albertio Remedios, the endless understanding of Norman Bailey’s Sachs and Goodall’s wise, expansive conducting (with no longueurs here as there occasionally are in his Ring) make this a prize issue.

-- Gramophone [7/2008]

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Neeme Jarvi conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in the second of four albums featuring the bold arrangements of Wagner by Henk de Vlieger. Of the first album, Classic FM magazine wrote ‘Dutch composer Henk de Vlieger builds a penetrating symphonic poem that reflects the dramatic depths of The Ring.’

In Parsifal, an orchestral quest, commissioned by the Netherland Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and dedicated to the musicians of this orchestra, Henk de Vlieger has compiled the musical and emotional highlights of Wagner’s opera, and whenever necessary he has stitched these into a new context. Thus De Vlieger retells the story of Parsifal with Wagner’s music. In order to do so he has kept the symmetry in the opera: 1. Vorspiel, 2 Parsifal, 3. Die Gralsritter I, 4. Die Blumennadchen, 5. Karfreitagszauber, 6. Die Gralsritter II, 7. Naschspiel.

This arrangement is coupled with Wagner’s arrangements of Overture and Venusberg Ballet Scene from Tannhauser and the concert version of Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin.

Chandos releases this album is surround-sound hybrid SACD to maximise the audio quality of the performance.

WAGNER Symphonies: in C, WWV 29; in E, WWV 35. Huldigungsmarsch. Rienzi: Overture. Kaisermarsch • Neeme Järvi, cond; Royal Scottish Natl O • CHANDOS 5097 (SACD: 79:14)


Here’s a milestone of sorts for me. In my nearly 10 years with Fanfare , this is my first time reviewing anything by Wagner. Mainly, the reason, I suppose, is that I don’t do opera, and what else is there, really, by Wagner that isn’t opera? Well, quite a lot, actually. Prior to his earliest completed stage works dating from between 1833 and 1838— Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot , and Die hohe Braut —Wagner wrote a goodly number of works, including several piano sonatas, a string quartet, concert overtures and overtures to plays, study fugues, songs, a considerable volume of miscellaneous piano pieces, and the two symphonies on this disc. And even after he threw himself into music drama with a passion, he continued to compose in other genres throughout his life.


Thus, the Huldigungsmarsch of 1864 was written right smack in the middle of Wagner’s work on Die Meistersinger , and the Kaisermarsch of 1871 comes dead-center during work on Parsifal . Still, the composer’s non-operatic music on record—I count the large numbers of collections of just the orchestral overtures, excerpts, and fragments from the operas as operatic music—seems to be an endangered species.


Wagner’s two symphonies have received one review each in these pages. The more recent appeared in Fanfare 31:2. That review by James Miller dealt with a two-CD Decca Eloquence Wagner collection of opera overtures and preludes performed by a host of orchestras and conductors. Buried among the familiar nuggets was the C-Major Symphony with Edo de Waart leading the San Francisco Symphony. Miller hears influences of Beethoven and, even more strongly, strains of Schubert in the work, and I wouldn’t disagree with him. Wagner was 19 when he wrote the piece in 1832, so it can’t be said that he was a precocious genius on the order of Mozart, Schubert, or Mendelssohn. It’s a pretty formulaic score, strongly redolent of some of Beethoven’s overtures and, curiously, Schubert’s Ninth, which Wagner could not have heard, since its first public performance was given by Mendelssohn in 1839.


A review of the E-Major Symphony goes back even further, to issue 20:4. Submitted by William Youngren, it covers an EMI recording by Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. Wagner’s second attempt at a symphony dates from 1834, but he never completed it. An Allegro con spirito first movement and 30 bars of an Adagio cantabile second movement are all he wrote. Moreover, Wagner didn’t orchestrate it. That task fell to the conductor Felix Mottl when Cosima Wagner enlisted him for the job. The symphony opens with a gesture startlingly reminiscent of the overture to Beethoven’s Fidelio.


Those recordings are still available. I’m afraid I don’t have either of them, but I do have a fine 1992 Denon CD containing both scores with Hiroshi Wakasugi leading the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, a disc you’ll find listed by Amazon but not by ArkivMusic. This new Chandos SACD, however, with Neeme Järvi’s tight grip on the reins and the recording’s deep stage and phenomenal spotting of instruments, is definitely the way to go, if these early works by Wagner interest you.


The Huldigungsmarsch is another item Wagner didn’t orchestrate himself, at least not completely. Purely out of a need for money, Wagner wrote the piece to pleasure the mad king of Bavaria, Ludwig II, originally scoring it for military band. He then began orchestrating the march for symphony orchestra but deferred to the advice of conductor Hans von Bülow to allow Joachim Raff to complete the task. One can’t help but wonder what this says about von Bülow’s opinion of Wagner’s abilities. Raff, you will recall, is the composer who also assisted Liszt with orchestrating some of his works.


Genesis of the Kaisermarsch is a little more complicated. In 1871, the Peters publishing house commissioned Wagner to write something upbeat and patriotic to cheer the troops and boost German morale during the Franco-Prussian war. Like the Huldigungsmarsch , the Kaisermarsch was originally scored for military band, but barely two months later, to celebrate the German victory and the coronation of the Prussian king as emperor of the newly founded German Reich, Wagner rescored the piece for symphony orchestra and added to the end of it a kind of community sing-along set to a sacred text for a strictly secular ceremonial occasion. As note author Emanuel Overbecke points out, “Wagner proved himself ever the political pragmatist, for only four years earlier he had dismissed the same monarch as feeble and ineffectual.” The choral finale is not included on the current recording.


Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen , or just Rienzi as it’s commonly known, was Wagner’s first real stage hit after a string of operatic works that were either left unfinished or that were completed and mounted but with little success. First produced in Dresden in 1842, Rienzi would also be Wagner’s last opera in which the Italian influence is strongly felt. Even before Rienzi premiered, Wagner had completed his next opera, The Flying Dutchman , in 1841. Rienzi’s overture is a staple of recorded collections featuring the overtures, preludes, and orchestral music from Wagner’s operas. Beginning at around 2:45, the slow-moving, chorale-like intoning of the brass, overlaid by striding, leaping figurations in the strings, anticipates the same technique Wagner used for similar effect in the overture to Tannhäuser two years later.


All of the works on this disc, with the exception of the Rienzi overture, have relatively few recorded listings and, to my knowledge, this is their first in surround sound. If you’re a Wagner fan, and your interest in his music extends beyond his operas, I can think of no reason for you not to be thrilled by this release. Neeme Järvi, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and Chandos have teamed up countless times over the years to bring us many truly outstanding recordings, and this is another of them.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

On this disc Chandos bring together some of the highlights from Neeme Jarvi's five-volume Wagner series with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. As an added bonus, they included the Overture to Der fliegende Holle�nder, a piece not before released as part of their Wagner series.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Wagner: Orchestral Music

WAGNER, R.: Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Die) / Tristan und I

The Estonian National Male Choir RAM was founded by the founder of Estonian choral music Gustav Ernesaks in 1944. Originally a male choir specializing in a cappella repertoire, it has grown into a world-renown professional performer of oratorial works. RAM has given more than 6000 concerts all over Estonia, in the former USSR, in Europe as well as in Israel, Canada and the USA. The Orchestra of the Estonian Defense Forces is a state ceremonial orchestra founded on February 1st, 1993, re-established with the Estonian Defense Forces after the country had regained it's independence.