Richard Wagner

Wagner: Das Rheingold

Recorded 1958

Dame Janet Baker

Wagner - The Great Operas from the Bayreuth Festival

Containing the classic Nilsson/Windgassen/ Böhm complete Ring Cycle and legendary Tristan und Isolde, Sawallisch's famous Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Der Fliegende Hollander + the Levine Parsifal and Varviso Meistersinger..

Speical Limited Edition while stocks last only

Juha Uusitalo - The Wagner Album

Bass-baritone Juha Uusistalo was born to sing Wagner.Amazingly this is his début recital album and features the powerful Finnish newcomer in the best-loved arias for male voice from Wagner's operas.

Christine Brewer

Opening concert of the 2007/8 Wigmore Hall season Notes on the encore by Christine: ‘A City Called Heaven’ negro spiritual I grew up in a family of singers, many of whom sang gospel music. My brothers and I quite often joined our mother in the church to sing gospel music and spirituals. This music has always been an important part of my life, so I try to include spirituals in my programs whenever I can. I find in the spirituals that no matter what the obstacles are, there is a deep underlying sense of hope and joy. This is what draws me to such music and gives me such joy to sing. ‘Ich liebe dich’ Richard Strauss: This is one of the many Strauss lieder that I have sung for years, and that Roger and I have performed and recorded. This song also exudes such utter joy that it's difficult not to just want to burst out in laughter at the end of it. It has one of the most exuberant postludes of any of Strauss' songs, and I love it! ‘Mira’ Bob Merrill: I started performing Mira about 20 years ago when I did little recitals and concerts around St. Louis. This song spoke to me right away, because it is about a girl who is missing her hometown where everyone knows her name. I grew up in a town of 500 and now live in a town of about 3,500, so I truly know what it is like to walk down the street and know most of the townspeople. There is a comfort in that for me, and I miss it when I am travelling around the world. I think I sang this song as an encore the very first time that I sang at the Wigmore Hall. It became one of Bill Lyne's favourites and he asked me to sing it at his farewell concert. So it has become a standard for me at the Wigmore, and one that always makes me think of home and all those folks there as well as my friends here in London when I sing it!

Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen

Wagner’s complete Ring cycle under Rudolf Kempe, recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1957 is being released shortly by Testament. The cast is headed by a galaxy of top class singers at the peak of their powers, including Hans Hotter (Wotan/Wanderer), Birgit Nilsson (Brünnhilde), Wolfgang Windgassen (Siegfried), Ramón Vinay (Siegmund) and Sylvia Fisher (Sieglinde). The supporting singers are equally distinguished and include Otakar Kraus (Alberich), Georgine von Milinkovic? (Fricka), Kurt Böhme (Hagen), Hermann Uhde (Gunther) and Joan Sutherland (Woglinde). The annual Ring cycle at Covent Garden in the late 1950s was highly regarded by audiences and critics alike for presenting the leading Wagnerian singers of the day in outstanding performances, most of which at that time were conducted by the much admired Rudolf Kempe. The transfers are being made using high quality source material from Lord Harewood’s collection.

Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen

“Like it, hate it but you cannot ignore it!” is a statement that can certainly be applied to Wagner’s tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung”. It contains four operas, took him thirty years to write (with a gap of about eleven years in the middle) and all performances last at least fourteen hours with the longest act longer than many full operas. Such statistics have been used to support Wagner as a serious composer who gave us so much and to his detractors as self-aggrandisement or worse!If one believes the truth that all grand art can be interpreted differently and inspire cultured debate then “The Ring” undoubtedly qualifies for that epithet.Richard Wagner started writing the book of prose, entitled “Siegfried’s Death” in which the heroine Brunnhilde would take the body of Siegfried back to Walhalla, much of what is now the final opera Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods).He then worked the story backwards to show how Siegfried lived his life and then to explain how Siegfried came to be he wrote what we now know as Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) centred around Brunnhilde and how she disobeyed the head of the Gods and her father, Wotan, and became a mortal. Finally he took the story back to the beginning before Alberich, the dwarf or Nibelung of the title, steals the gold from the Rhinemaidens and fashions a ring through whose power he plans to rule the world,Productions have treated it as a great adventure story with the perpetual battle of “The love of Power against the power of Love”, a political allegory based, it seems, at any time in the history of the world it seems with the major players wearing as many personae as the directors who have produced the opera. As often is the case the best production is in one’s imagination as there dwarves, giants, humans, dragons, magic helmets and rings can truly come alive. Wagner helps us in this respect as he carefully selects and blends certain tunes or motives which represent an animate or inanimate object, an emotion or feeling. So when these are sounded the listener has this signpost which informs him, for example, which character is around or being talked about or even what a character is thinking even though he may be saying something else.To do justice to such an enterprise much hard work needs to be expended with the involvement of a huge cast including singers in all vocal ranges with prodigious powers of expression, a chorus of great strength and a superb orchestra all under the guidance of a conductor who must be fully experienced in the ways of the theatre and music. Backing them up, a first rate technical and musical team of producers and engineers to create the ambience that is demanded by the score. EMI Classics were fortunate to secure all of these in this recording.

String Quartets By Opera Composers