Wagner: O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe (from Tristan und Isolde) (Liebesnacht, Love Duet)

After the sensational success of his debut album ‘Helden’ (Heroes), Germany´s leading Wagner tenor - Klaus Florian Vogt - presents his first all-Wagner arias CD.

The album presents arias from the Wagner operas Mr Vogt has sung at famous opera houses around the world, including ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’, ‘Lohengrin’ (being his breakthrough success and most famous role at the Bayreuth Wagner festival), ‘Parsifal’ (new production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin 2012), ‘Walküre’ (new production of the ‘Ring des Nibelungen’ at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich).

The CD also includes roles Vogt has not sung before on stage, such as ‘Rienzi’ and ‘Tristan and Isolde’. Vogt is accompanied here by the acclaimed Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jonathan Nott.

Klaus Florian Vogt sings in all major opera houses around the world. In 2013, he will star in a new production in Milan (‘The Flying Dutchman’) and will also perform at the opera houses in Barcelona (‘Rusalka’), Tokyo (‘The Mastersingers of Nuremberg’), Berlin (‘Lohengrin’), Munich (‘The Flying Dutchman’ & ‘Lohengrin’), Hamburg (‘The Mastersingers of Nuremberg’) and Helsinki (‘The Dead City’). He will also be on stage in Bayreuth in 2013.

Mr Vogt received the prestigious German Echo ‘Singer of the Year’ Award in 2012 for the ‘Helden’ CD.

“…the timbre rewards the ear with its clarity, youthfulness and affecting sweetness” International Record Review on ‘Helden’

“…delightful, fleet nimbleness…” The Independent on ‘Helden’

The best-loved and most popular works by Richard Wagner, performed by the world’s leading artists, in an accessible format at budget price.

Looking back at Tristan und Isolde twenty years after its composition, Wagner told his wife Cosima: ‘My model was Romeo and Juliet – nothing but duets!’ He was invoking Bellini’s opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi, which he had conducted many times as a young man. Indeed, there had been much in the Italian master’s legacy that had impressed the young Wagner, including the ‘long, long, long melodies’ that Verdi described, and the technique of melodic sequence in which a phrase is repeated with rising pitch and heightened effect. The erotic potential of such procedures is famously exploited in the ‘night of love’ in Act II of Tristan und Isolde. And while this might well claim to be Wagner’s best-known duet, this innovative 2CD set, compiled by Australia’s Wagner expert Peter Bassett (who also contributes the notes) brings together a collection of dialogues, musical conversations and duets from the major Wagner operas.

The recordings are among the finest ever made. The singers are a Who’s Who of great names from the sixties, seventies and eighties – Fischer-Dieskau, Janowitz, Vickers, Thomas, Price, Kollo… with conductors like Karajan, Kleiber and Jochum directing these revelatory performances. The breadth and diversity of the emotion on this double album is matched by the generous playing times: more than two hours and forty minutes of music on a 2CD set.

The purpose of this present collection of recording is to provide a document showing the vocal techniques of the ‘golden generation’ of Wagner interpreters.

It begins with a true icon of Wagner’s music: Kirsten Flagstad who performs not the famous 1952 recording of Brunhilde, but a 1948 version recorded in the Abbey Road studios), and carries on with Eileen Farrell (an American singer of rare versatility), George London singing Wotan and a serious list of other top quality performers.

The recordings are all taken from the period 1941-1959 and this release gives us a unique collection of the sheer quality of these Wagner performers, all of them ‘stars’ of their time.