This was the eighth release in Pentatone’s successful Wagner Edition and the second in the exciting Wagner Year of 2013. Previous releases in the edition have garnered rave reviews from major quarters: “…unquestionably the finest modern version on disc” (BBC Music Magazine). PentaTone’s Wagner Edition is an unprecedented project, uniting the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and acclaimed music director Marek Janowski with the greatest Wagner singers in the international opera scene today.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth. This CD clearly shows Wagner’s ambition to vie with Beethoven, manifesting the inclination towards big and boundless writing. Tobias Koch, one of the most versatile keyboard instrumentalists of his generation, reproduces Wagner’s original sound in brilliant fashion.

Stellar cast and musicians includes Jonas Kaufmann, Ludovic Tézier, Elina Garanca and Wolfgang Koch, as well as Wagner-specialist Philippe Jordan conducting the Vienna State Opera orchestra and chorus. This was recorded live in April 2021 during the run of the Vienna State Opera's hit new production of Wagner's late - and arguably greatest - opera Parsifal. Deluxe, four CD-set with a 300 page booklet includes texts & Libretto in 3 different languages (DE, EN, FR).

REVIEWS:

Kaufmann’s performance in the title role will doubtless be regarded as its main selling point...but it’s Elīna Garanča as Kundry, in her first Wagnerian role, whose performance is perhaps the most extraordinary...the orchestral playing is as intense as anyone could want, and the closing pages are suitably transcendent.

-- The Guardian (U.K.)

Happily, most of the singing is marvelous...Kaufmann’s finest stretches as Parsifal comes in later acts, when his passions fly, top notes ping, and dark timbres shake the rafters, alongside strong competition from Garanča’s bloodcurdling screams…. Jordan is a masterful Wagnerian who knows instinctively when to move forward or how long to pause, sometimes more than Wagner himself.

-- The Times (U.K.)

Wagner’s "Der Ring des Nibelungen" (‘The Ring of the Nibelung’) comprises four operas of which "Die Walküre" (‘The Valkyrie’) is the second, famous for its spectacular set-pieces such as the "Ride of the Valkyries" and Wotan’s "Farewell." The plot focuses on the lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde and on the disobedience of the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, who defies the edict of Fricka, the goddess of marriage, to punish them. With "Die Walküre" Wagner achieved a perfect synthesis of poetry and music. Sir Donald Runnicles conducts an internationally acclaimed cast in this innovative new production by Norwegian director Stefan Herheim.

Die Walkure is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. The story of Die Walkure is based on the Norse mythology told in the Volsunga saga and the Poetic Edda. In this version, the Volsung twins Sieglinde and Siegmund, separated in childhood, meet and fall in love. This union angers the gods, who demand that Siegmund must die. Sieglinde and the couple's unborn child are saved by the defiant actions of Wotan's daughter, the title character, Valkyrie Brunnhilde, who as a result faces the gods' retribution.

"An all-Wagner recital program, featuring famous arias from “Tannhäuser” and “Tristan und Isolde”, and the lovely, rapturous Wesendonck Lieder.
Soprano Anne Schwanewilms sucessfully debuted recently at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.
Ms. Schwanewilms makes her debut as Isolde on this CD..
The Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Cornelius Meister."

As early as 1851, Wagner wrote, 'I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas, preceded by a lengthy Prelude.' The Prelude was "Das Rheingold" ('The Rhine Gold') the preliminary evening of Wagner's epic tetralogy "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ('The Ring of the Nibelung'), which received it's first complete performance in 1876. The unfolding events of Das Rheingold depict the theft of the Ring forged from the Rhinemaidens' gold by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich, and his subsequent surrender of it to Wotan, ruler of the Gods, to pay his debt to the giants who constructed Valhalla. Alberich's curse foreshadows the catastrophe to come. Sir Donald Runnicles conducts an internationally acclaimed cast in this innovative new production of "Der Ring" by Norwegian director Stefan Herheim.

RICHARD WAGNER Petra Maria Schnitzer, soprano; Peter Seiffert, tenor; Munchner Rundfunkorchester/Ulf Schirmer; Live recording: Munich, January 14-17, 2008. RICHARD WAGNER: Arias from Lohengrin; Tannhauser; Die Walkure.

At the most recent production at the Vienna State Opera, the twins were sung by Nina Stemme and - for the first time in the role - Johan Botha. Since then both soloists have enjoyed international success in even more dramatic Wagner roles. This CD release of the live performance of the first act is ideal for all those who are curious to hear more, but perhaps hesitate to get to grips with complete, modern performances of the Ring.

This new release features highlights from the operas of epic composer, Richard Wagner. Conductor Christian Thielemann has a long relationship with the music of Wagner, and is a master at interpreting the complex works. Thielemann is currently the Chief Conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden. The performing ensemble on this recording is the Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin.

Richard Wagner’s Ring has been performed in the highly reduced version by Wieland Wagner at the eight Beyreuth festivals since the re-opening of the theatre in 1951. Although his version- still sparing in comparison with today’s staging concepts- depended on its use of lighting and special effects, he took the opportunity to bring in a complete musical overhaul: direction of the production was given to the 48-year-old conductor Rudolf Kempe. While a younger generation was taking over on the conductor’s rostrum at the new Bayreuth, a new generation of singers was also finding its feet in the great Ring roles. In the new production, tenor Gerhard Stolze was able to build on his finely acted, declamatory portrayal of Mime that he had taken on in 1957. Regine Crespin, who had successfully taken the role of Kundry in Parsifal in Bayreuth since 1958 and only appeared in the Ring that one year, imbued the role of Sieglinde with the touching emotionality of her highly dramatic soprano voice, and gave a persuasive reading, with the young Fritz Uhl playing her loving brother.

The roles featured on this album are, in more ways than one, truly great ones- and the vocal and interpretational demands on the artist are of an equally high caliber. The fact, as J.M. Fischer writes in the booklet text, that the term “heroic baritone” has established itself in connection with these roles is recognition of the highly technical challenges- and simultaneously an understatement. The parallels with Wagner’s “heroic tenor roles” can be seen in the truly supreme vocal challenges, and yet the bass-baritone protagonist’s role in each of these works also demands even greater control of the dramatic character of the role and, therefore, a more complex musical approach. The enduring fascination of these demanding roles can also be sought in their “tragic awareness,” their undeniably “modern” broken state- something that is highly present in an era which sees itself as “post-heroic.” Michael Volle is the epitome of a singer who has almost untypically by today’s standard continuously grown into these roles and developed them in a serious way to bring out their individual characters. He now performs those great Wagner roles on the most renowned international stages.

James King (1925-2005) stood in the 1960s on the cusp of his Bayreuth career, which had begun earlier with the role of Siegmund. Anyone who is familiar with the baritone origins of the tenor from Kansas, USA, may well be surprised at the tremendous dynamic grading in the suspended high registers through to the sonorous piano passages that he was capable of at his Bayreuth debut in the role of the Knight of the Swan. He kept that role in his repertoire for more than a quarter of a century, singing it right up to the end of his career at new venues. The Elsa at James King’s side in this case was Irish-born Heather Harper, who went on to become famous for her performances and premieres of works by Benjamin Britten. With her superlative, highly-spun lyrical phrasing and many nuances her “foray” into the realms of Wagner is a pure listening pleasure. The last of the soloists at that performance were Thomas Tipton as an elegant King’s Herald; the reason for his reputation as the leading gentleman baritone of the Bavarian State Opera in those days is audible here; and the “outsider” so to speak, in the midst of these English-speaking singers who nevertheless sang in perfect German: Karl Ridderbusch with his truly balmy bass as King Heinrich.

This new album is a stroke of luck. For 15 years Nina Stemme has been reinvigorating Wagner’s female roles with the dramatic soul and vocal power previously attained perhaps only by her compatriot Birgit Nilsson. Nina Stemme’s role interpretations are met with great acclaim among both audience and critics, and 2013 she was the first recipient of the Opera Award for Best Female Singer. Nina Stemme was appointed Swedish Court Singer 2006, Austrian Kammersängerin 2012, and she has been selected ”Singer of the Year” twice, 2005 and 2012, in the German magazine Opernwelt. On this release she performs works from Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried, Hollander, and Die Walkure.

Nobody mastered and shaped the great roles of high drama in the post-war period as effortlessly as Birgit Nilsson - this is her stupendous breakthrough as Isolde at Bayreuth with the musical colleagues she so highly respected. Birgit Nilsson, the young Swedish singer, had, together with Sigurd Bjorling, been recommended by Leo Blech to Winifred Wagner back in 1948 “because her sons felt eager and obliged to establish a new ensemble,” or so Wolfgang Wagner commented in 1994. Nilsson declined an offer to portray Sieglinde in Die Walkure in Bayreuth in 1951 due to an engagement at Glyndebourne. After much negotiation, she was first engaged at the festival in 1953 when she assumed the soprano part in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It was this production from 1958, however, that cemented her place in Bayreuth history. Wolfgang Wagner observed in his memoirs: “The way that Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen, in collaboration with Karl Bohm and Wieland Wagner, became the perfect duo in the title of Tristan… had been part of my design several years previously, and so I was delighted to have conferred the ‘minor orders’ on these two great artists.”