Richard Wagner

This 50-CD set is released to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner, and is an outstanding sound document of the history of the Bayreuth Festival during the first half of the 20th century. The collection includes music from all operas authorised by Wagner for performance in Bayreuth. To complement the edition, scenes and solo titles out of the decades of the festival direction of Cosima, Siegfried and Winifred Wagner are included. They go back to the festival summer of 1904 and communicate impressions from important and famous performances until 1943.

Recordings from New Bayreuth of the Wagner grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang lead to the newest era of the festival. All performances on the 50 CDs are original recordings from Bayreuth and are directed by Siegfried Wagner, Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Victor de Sabata, Karl Muck, Herbert von Karajan, Clemens Krauss, Joseph Keilberth, Hans Knappertsbusch, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Lorin Maazel and André Cluytens – a role call of some of the 20th century’s greatest conductors.

The Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad is considered to be one of the greatest Wagnerian singers of all time. This 10-CD set features recordings from the beginning of her international career in 1935 through to a few years before her death in 1962.

In addition to her celebrated performances of the music of Wagner, she was also capable of delicate feeling in the interpretation of works by Handel, Gluck, Purcell, Weber and Beethoven, and music by these composers, together with a series of Grieg songs, are included in the collection. Finally, no survey of her art would be complete without her famous recording of Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs from 1950.

On the heels of the release by Deutsche Grammophon of the complete Ring Cycle DVD Box from the Met, this 2CD compilation is the ultimate must-have for any music and Wagner lover.

It includes the highlights of all the “Ring” operas, featuring the stars of the recent New York Met production: Bryn Terfel, Deborah Voigt and Jonas Kaufmann.

Ride of the Valkyries, Prelude from das Rheingold, Siegfried's death are all featured on our 2 CD compilation.

The most famous, the most performed, the most thrilling, and the most recorded opera cycle in music history.

A unique and exclusive package, on multi-set DVD and Blu-Ray, of the most successful Ring Cycle production of the 21th century.

Filmed at the world-famous Metropolitan Opera House in New York, in high definition – the award winning Robert Lepage production. Featuring Bryn Terfel as Wotan – universally recognized as the finest bass-baritone – and Wotan – of his generation. Also starring Deborah Voigt as Brunnhilde, and star tenor Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund.

This award-winning and ground-breaking production has been seen by over 150,000 people at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and subsequently by a remarkable 800,000 people in cinemas and movie-theatres around the globe

Features some of the most remarkable and memorable music of all time – including “The Ride of the Valkyries” and “Siegfried’s Funeral March”, as heard in countless Hollywood blockbusters and global TV commercials over the last forty years.

Recorded in Bayreuth in 1961

The fifth volume in this much admired series offers another fascinating anthology. Of the 17 pianists, the two oldest are the long-lived Cornelia Rider-Possart (1865-1963) who can be heard on an exceptionally rare, non-commercial 1926 Berlin disc, in the first recording of Scriabin’s Etude, Op. 42, No. 3, and Etelka Freund (1879-1977), a pupil of Brahms, who performs one of his Intermezzos in 1952. Jean Melville, a distant relation of Arthur Sullivan, plays Valse arabesque in London in 1923, whilst Johana Harris who, together with her husband, the American composer Roy Harris, enjoyed a highly successful career, can be heard playing Frescobaldi in Los Angeles.

Marina A. Ledin & Victor Ledin, producers

For this recording the orchestra of the radio station was supported by musicians from other orchestras, and Furtwängler had more than a month available for rehearsals. The whole work was also performed in sections in front of a small audience to give the singers a break. Because these superb recordings were not released for 25 years due to legal restrictions they have taken on legendary status. The illustrious casts of singers for the four operas include Ferdinand Frantz, Wolfgang Windgassen, Gottlob Frick, Hilde Konetzni, Martha Mödl, Ludwig Suthaus, Josef Greindl and Margarete Klose.

Listening now to this album one regrets that Sir John Barbirolli’s appearances in the opera house were so few. After all, though he himself was born in London his family was steeped in the Italian operatic tradition: before leaving Italy both his father and grandfather had been members of the orchestra at La Scala, Milan (along with a young cellist named Arturo Toscanini), and in 1887 they had played in the premiere of Verdi’s Otello. By the age of 25 he was appearing at the head of his own orchestra. His potential was quickly recognised by Frederic Austin of the British National Opera Company, who engaged him on the spot. Over the next seven years, either for BNOC or at Covent Garden (where he first appeared in 1928) Barbirolli conducted Aida, Falstaff, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La bohème, Tosca, Turandot, Madama Butterfly, Gianni Schicchi, The Barber of Seville, Romeo and Juliet, Hansel and Gretel, Don Giovanni, The Bartered Bride, Die Fledermaus, Die Meistersinger, Der Rosenkavalier and The Wreckers.

The Barbirolli years after 1933 were filled by orchestral appointments and it was not until 1951 that he was able to return to Covent Garden. Over the next three seasons he was prominent there conducting old favourites such as Turandot, Aida, La bohème and Madama Butterfly, and adding to them Tristan und Isolde and Orpheus and Eurydice. At the time it was widely thought that Barbirolli might take over at Covent Garden, but his orchestral responsibilities had become all-consuming and in fact after the 1953-4 season he never appeared there again. His love of operatic music remained as strong as ever, though, and found its outlet in concert performances of complete operas and evenings of operatic excerpts. Such events became popular and, on account of Barbirolli’s prestige, would draw huge crowds. Some of these carried into the recording studio: the present album is a fine souvenir of his devoted approach to his beloved Puccini. But he was not now seen in any opera house. Only in his last decade did he find time to conduct Aida in Rome, and to make commercial recordings of Madama Butterfly, Otello and Dido and Aeneas.