Wagner bonanza

Posted by: JeremyB on 18 September 2008

The recent crop of CD sets gets better and better. I just received my 33-CD Bayreuth Festival box set, for the great price of $56 from Barnes and Noble. A total of 8 operas including the complete Ring cycle. I dived straight into Tristan with Windgassen, Talvela, Nilsson and Ludwig. Sound is truly superb, capturing perfectly the famous dry acoustic of Bayreuth and of course the attentive, silent, non-coughing audience. This is easily the best balance I have heard in Tristan and Isolde, better than any studio recording, although some of the solo instrument effects are more muted and less tightly formed than they are on most of the studio recordings. I can't wait to explore the rest of the set.

Complete listing:



Wagner: The Great Operas from the Bayreuth Festival
Composer
Richard Wagner
(1813-1883)

Artists
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra & Chorus with various soloists & conductors
Catalogue Number
478 0279 2


International Release Date
May 2008





TRACKLISTING

CDs 1& 2
Der fliegende Holländer
Anja Silja / Fritz Uhl / Josef Greindl / Franz Crass
Wolfgang Sawallisch

CDs 3-5
Tannhäuser
Silja / Wolfgang Windgassen / Eberhard Wächter /
Josef Greindl
Wolfgang Sawallisch

CDs 6-8
Lohengrin
Anja Silja / Astrid Varnay / Jess Thomas / Ramon Vinay
Wolfgang Sawallisch

CDs 9-11
Tristan und Isolde
Birgit Nilsson / Wolfgang Windgassen
Karl Böhm

CDs 12-15
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Hannelore Bode / Jean Cox / Bernd Weikl / Karl Ridderbusch / Sans Sotin
Silvio Varviso

Der Ring des Nibelungen:
CDs 16 & 17
Das Rheingold
Annelies Burmeister / Wolfgang Windgassen / Theo Adam /
Gustav Neidlinger
Karl Böhm

CDs 18-21
Die Walküre
Birgit Nilsson / Leonie Rysanek / James King / Theo Adam
Karl Böhm

CDs 22-25
Siegfried
Birgit Nilsson / Wolfgang Windgassen / Theo Adam
Karl Böhm

CDs 26-29
Götterdämmerung
Birgit Nilsson / Wolfgang Windgassen / Josef Greindl /
Gustav Neidlinger
Karl Böhm

CDs 30-33
Parsifal
Waltraud Meier / Peter Hoffmann / Hans Sotin / Simon Estes
James Levine

RECORDING INFORMATION

All of Wagner's operas from Der fliegende Holländer (1841) to his final masterpiece Parsifal (1882) in performances from the theatre which was created specifically for the production of Wagner's operas, the Bayreuth Festival Theatre.
Posted on: 18 September 2008 by u5227470736789439
A Wagner feast indeed! I used to have Seigfreid and Gotterdamerung in these [Boehm led] performances, and if everything else is up to that standard of performance, then it will be compelling.

I am no enthusiast of of Richard Wagner's music, but some here are, and hopefully will come along with something nice to say.

Simply put this must be an amazing bargain. Both the two [of the four] Ring Operas that I had cost me 40 GBP each in the mid eighties!

ATB from George
Posted on: 18 September 2008 by Todd A
The Bohm Ring is superb. His Tristan even better - of the dozen or so I've heard I can think of no better version. Sawallisch should be solid in the three he leads, but Levine's Parsifal is blech. I must say I've never hankered for any recordings led by Silvio Varviso (who?).
Posted on: 19 September 2008 by Tam
This set is a good bargain, even if the recordings are not the ones I would choose. I'm not as keen on the Bohm ring (or, indeed, his conducting in general). I think Gotterdammerung is superb, but elsewhere it suffers from Theo Adam's Wotan who I don't find terribly impressive.

I haven't heard the Parsifal but wouldn't touch it with a barge pole after the mind-numbing tedium which was my experience of Levine's Ring cycle at the Met.

regards, Tam