WAGNER Opera Excerpts

Fischer’s Wagner homage and first taste of Lang’s Brünnhilde

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Iván Fischer, Richard Wagner

Genre:

Opera

Label: Channel Classics

Media Format: Super Audio CD

Media Runtime: 64

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: CCSSA32713

CCSSA32713. WAGNER Opera Excerpts. Iván Fischer

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
(Die) Meistersinger von Nürnberg, '(The) Masters, Movement: Prelude Richard Wagner, Composer
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer, Composer
Richard Wagner, Composer
(Der) Ring des Nibelungen: Part 4, 'Götterdämmerung', Movement: Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey (concert version) Richard Wagner, Composer
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer, Composer
Richard Wagner, Composer
(Der) Ring des Nibelungen: Part 4, 'Götterdämmerung', Movement: Siegfried's funeral march Richard Wagner, Composer
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer, Composer
Richard Wagner, Composer
(Der) Ring des Nibelungen: Part 4, 'Götterdämmerung', Movement: Starke Scheite (Brünnhildes's Immolation) Richard Wagner, Composer
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer, Composer
Petra Lang, Soprano
Richard Wagner, Composer
Siegfried Idyll Richard Wagner, Composer
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer, Composer
Richard Wagner, Composer
The Meistersinger Overture’s sprightly pace (heading towards a total playing time of less than 10 minutes), the crisp Toscanini-like timpani attack, the distinctive mid-European wind sound and the extraordinary clarity of the harp-writing immediately promise something out of the ordinary. ‘Bleeding chunks’ maybe, but sounding here as if they’re being premiered after careful, loving rehearsal which speaks of Fischer’s knowledge (and use) of the stage drama behind the music.

The run-in to curtain-up in Meistersinger, the gentle (but not sentimental) little rits and ralls in the Siegfried Idyll, the trilling of the winds that hurl happy, young, innocent Siegfried down the Rhine, the pain of the Funeral Music are re-minted here. Alongside Jonathan Nott’s accompaniment of Klaus Florian Vogt (Sony, 6/13) and Donald Runnicles’s of Jonas Kaufmann (Decca, 5/13), Fischer’s work stands as some of the finest new conducting yet put on disc in Wagner’s bicentenary year.

And the soloist? As a colleague used to say, ‘if you start like this, they’ll want blood,’ and that’s exactly what the fiery Petra Lang, a Brünnhilde debutante this year (hear her in the completion of Janowski’s Pentatone Ring cycle), delivers here. Like Anja Silja’s, this is a voice and personality engaged in the drama: dynamics, tone, colour all serve Brünnhilde’s dark, serious ride into the fire – about as far away from the grand opera of Deborah Voigt and her Metropolitan mechanical horse as you can imagine. Hugely recommended.

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