Wagner: Faust Overture, WWV59

Neeme Järvi conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in the fourth album of their Wagner series.

Their performances on the previous three volumes have received high critical acclaim. American Record Guide wrote of Volume 1: ‘This is wonderful playing and sound… Järvi knows exactly what to do to make the music speak. The orchestra sounds better than I’ve ever heard them.’

This disc features a symphonic arrangement by the Dutch composer and percussionist Henk de Vlieger of Wagner’s only comic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. It is the only opera by Wagner centred round a specific time and place in history, rather than a mythical or legendary past. The story takes place in Nuremberg during the middle of the sixteenth century, and revolves around the real-life guild of the Master Singers, an association of amateur poets and musicians who developed a craftsman-like approach to music-making.

Wagner left the two early Entreactes tragiques unfinished, the first only partially orchestrated, and they are heard here in orchestrations completed by De Vlieger.

Completing the disc are the seldom performed and recorded Overture to Columbus, and Eine Faust-Ouvertüre by Wagner. Written in 1835, when Wagner was just twenty-two years old, the Weber-influenced Columbus Overture introduces the play by Theodor Apel. His Faust-Overture followed in 1840. Taking its inspiration from Goethe’s famous play, this work, together with Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, became the main example of nineteenth-century programme music.

A stunning Wagner collection including all the major overtures and preludes (including the very rare and very beautiful Die Feen [The Fairies]), this collection is noteworthy for other reasons. For a start, it brings together in a single collection the complete Decca Wagner recordings of Zubin Mehta and the complete Philips Wagner recordings of Edo de Waart. It also features two rarities - Wagner's early Symphony (with the San Francisco Symphony and Edo de Waart) and a tiny choral piece - Kinderkatechismus - an absolute Decca rarity and much sought-after by collectors.

Under the dual influences of Goethe and Berlioz, Wagner wrote A Faust Overture in Paris. Years later, in 1855, he returned to the work, revising it to create an even greater sense of drama and narrative conviction. In the excerpts from his romantic opera Lohengrin we hear the visionary Prelude to Act I and the Act III Prelude, which includes the well-known Wedding March. Elsa’s Dream is sung by the internationally acclaimed soprano, Alessandra Marc. The orchestral music from Parsifal contains some of the most transcendent music Wagner ever wrote. Volumes 1 and 3 in this series are available on 8572767 and 8572769.

Wagner composed an arrangement of Gluck’s Iphigenie in Aulis, adding a new ending of his own and ATMA offers the first-ever recording of Wagner’s original, discovered in Zürich in the late 1990s. Two more gems are included; Siegfried-Idyll in its original version for chamber orchestra and Richard Strauss’ Oboe Concertos completes the CD.