Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer: Overture (The Flying Dutchman Overture)

This double-CD set brings together for the first time two of Claudio Abbado’s Wagner recordings, the first of orchestral music, the second a selection of vocal works with Bryn Terfel, the leading Wagner baritone of our day.

“Terfel brings a wide palette of tone to peer into the Dutchman's soul and express Wolfram's evening thoughts, where his legato and half-voice are admirable” (Gramophone)

These stereo recordings date from sessions on 16 and 17 September 1959 for Pye. (The Tannhäuser Overture was recorded at an earlier session in April 1959). The Meistersinger Overture and Act 3 Suite was popular with Barbirolli, having recorded it for HMV in 1944 and other Wagner works he recorded included the Lohengrin Preludes (HMV 1946, now released on SJB1004), the Rienzi Overture (HMV 1944). A unique opportunity to hear an all-Wagner concert from Barbirolli comes in a ‘live’ broadcast with the New York Philharmonic in November 1938 which includes the Siegfried Idyll, which he never recorded commercially (Barbirolli Society SJB1035).

Whatever qualms Wagner himself might have had about performing extracts from his operas in the concert hall, he was, as a professional musician, able to suppress them. They brought in revenue, of course, but this was not the main consideration; more important was that his work should be known and understood. He therefore sanctioned, even encouraged, the performance of excerpts from his operas, either with vocalists or, as in the present recording, in purely orchestral form.

This is the first volume of a set of multi-channel Hybrid SACD recordings by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and renowned conductor Edo de Waart that will feature the orchestral music of Richard Wagner. It includes overtures, preludes and interludes from Die Meistersinger, Lohengrin, Parsifal, The Flying Dutchman, Tristan und Isolde, and Tannhäuser.

Edo de Waart was Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra from 1989-2004, and is now its conductor Laureate. His early career took off when he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition in New York, and that resulted in his appointment as Assistant Conductor to Leonard Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic.

On his return to Holland he was appointed Assistant Conductor to Bernard Haitink at the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and in 1973 he was appointed Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Edo de Waart has also been affiliated with several leading American orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony and Minnesota Orchestras.

Richard Wagner expanded the standard operatic orchestra of the earlier 19th century into a large assembly of instrumental families, with an apparently infinite variety of colourings to match the setting and mood of each work and each scene. The most revolutionary aspect of the orchestral music of his mature operas is how it is used not as an accompaniment to the singers but as the leading carrier of the musical line.

André Clutyens was born in Antwerp and both he and his father conducted the Antwerp Opera. He became a French citizen and was principal conductor of the Paris Conservatory Orchestra. He made many recordings, most of which have been re-issued on CD. These recordings were made between 1953 and 1959.

The spotlight is on Richard Wagner in this 22nd volume of the Staatskapelle Dresden Edition; the thrilling programme includes scenes from four of Wagner’s most popular operas.