After his triumphant appearance as Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival in July 2011, Klaus Florian Vogt makes his debut album. His success at Bayreuth is the culmination of a unique career, becoming "the" German Wagnerian tenor par excellence in a remarkably short time, with regular appearances at Bayreuth, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and at all major opera stages around the world. "Helden" presents the exclusive Sony Classical artist in his signature role of Lohengrin, singing "In fernem Land" in addition to other arias by Wagner as well as selections by Mozart, Weber, Lortzing, Flotow and Korngold. Vogt is accompanied by the renowned orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, conducted by Peter Schneider.

"Klaus Florian Vogt [is] a Lohengrin with a perfect Tamino voice that somehow manages to laser its way through the role without forcing and who acts the part of the Knight-composer with grace." -- Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com reviewing Vogt as Lohengrin, Opus Arte 964

"Klaus Forian Vogt is excellent in the role of Walther and probably the strongest singer in this production. He has an attractive voice and sufficient power to stand out in heavily scored passages. His Morgenlich leuchtend in rosigem Schein is beautifully sung..." -- Robert Cummings, MusicWeb International reviewing Vogt in Meistersinger, Opus Arte 1041

Although Wagner didn't compose organ music himself, it is not difficult to imagine his colorful orchestrations transcribed for the organ. To enrich an overly ecclesiastic organ repertoire, 19th-century composers such as the legendary organist Edwin Lemare, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, and Franz Liszt created organ transcriptions of beloved Wagner operas like Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, Tristan und Isolde, and Tannhauser. With their intricate layering and dramatic counterpoints, these operas proved a perfect match for the splendor of the Romantic organ.

Wagner: Highlights from "The Ring"

Monika Steiner, Michael Weber, Friedemann Kalppert, Andreas Tuschi, Daniel Aigner, Oliver Sturm, Wolfgang Konnyu, Martin Lukesch, Doris Engl, Peter Koefler, Herbert Kienast, and Christine Burkhardt star.

Wagner’s Siegfried is the third opera in the cycle that makes up Der Ring des Nibelungen. It premiered during the first complete performance of the cycle in August 1876 at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Rene Kollo performs in one of his greatest recorded performances in the title role of Siegfried. German conductor Marek Janowski is a brilliant interpreter of Wagner, having conducted the first digitally recorded Ring cycle between 1980 and 1983.

In 2015, Sony Classical reissued Die Walküre and Siegfried from the first digital recording of the Ring. “It has stood the test of time remarkably well”, observed ClassicsToday.com when the complete set, originally released in 1983, was last reissued. “The Staatskapelle Dresden plays spotlessly for Marek Janowski … An excellent ‘Ring’ experience.” Now the remaining two music dramas from this acclaimed cycle are again available separately. Das Rheingold is dominated by Siegfried Nimsgern’s vibrant, articulate Alberich, Peter Schreier’s wonderfully vital, strikingly intelligent and articulate Loge and Theo Adam’s experienced Wotan. But Fricka, the Giants and Rhinemaidens are all well cast, and the whole performance grips one’s attention from start to finish.”

Vier Letzte Lieder, Wesendonck

Opera Arias

Complete Works For Piano

In 2015, Sony Classical reissued Die Walküre and Siegfried from the first digital recording of the Ring. “It has stood the test of time remarkably well”, observed ClassicsToday.com when the complete set, originally released in 1983, was last reissued. “The Staatskapelle Dresden plays spotlessly for Marek Janowski … An excellent ‘Ring’ experience.” Now the remaining two music dramas from this acclaimed cycle are again available separately. Gramophone in 1997 praised the “marvellously clean, spacious digital recording” and “Janowski’s fast, lyrical, wholly cogent reading [which] has the Dresden Staatskapelle playing with the utmost beauty from start to finish – try the start of Act 3 of Götterdämmerung – and with lean power when that’s called for … Voices and players are in an ideal relationship, which is not say that such [orchestral] passages as the Rhine Journey and Funeral March want anything in visceral excitement … Matti Salminen is a commanding, often subtle Hagen … The smaller parts, especially Rhinemaidens led by Lucia Popp, are well taken …

This reissue is part of the first digital recording of Wagner’s Ring cycle which was released originally in 1983 and was conducted for Marek Janowski. The Staatskapelle Dresden is the performing ensemble for this recording, playing brilliantly for Janowski, who is a masterful Wagner interpreter. Gramophone wrote in 1997 of this recording, “Die Walkure introduces us to Jessye Norman’s involving Sieglinde and the youthful Siegfried Jerusalem’s near-ideal Siegmund, forthright and sincere, not forgetting Kurt Moll’s granite Hunding. Theo Adam [as Wotan] is so authoritative, so keen with the text, so inside his part…”

Wagner's immense imagination reveals itself in the composer's 16-hour Ring cycle, being able to fully captivate worldwide audiences since it's complete performance in 1876 in Bayreuth. Christian Thielemann's conducting of "Velvety sound of unmatched beauty" (The Guardian) leads an extremely sophisticated production, with Tcherniakov's stage that meets the highest technical standards, evolved in ever new, impressive spaces. "Gotterdammerung" is the concluding chapter of Wagner's monumental four-part opus, which he conceived in the light of the revolution of 1848/49 and completed in 1874 after numerous attempts and a long interruption. In many ways, the thematic and musical threads are intertwined in a highly artistic and complex manner. "Tcherniakov, as usual, manages details on a level rarely seen in opera." (The New York Times)

Best known for his operas, several of which are available on Marco Polo, Siegfried Wagner' songs only really entered the consciousness of the music-loving public when Hanne Lore Kuhse presented an evening of Lieder at the margravial opera house.

Classical Music

Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods) is the epic fourth and final opera of Wagner’s great Ring cycle, with a plot that depicts the fall of heroes, gods, and the entire world. As ever with the Ring, the joys of love are all too fragile and fleeting, and the drama of Gotterdammerung revolves around dark and unsettling reversals of fortune and illusions of hope that synthesize thrilling and powerful grand opera traditions with Wagner’s revolutionary techniques. Containing all of the Ring’s essential elements, Gotterdammerung’s profoundly satisfying sense of inevitability makes it both a towering climax and a unified summation of the Ring’s abundant variety.