Wagner: Tannhäuser: Venusberg Music (bacchanale) - CD

As part of the Wagner 200th birth date celebrations, Israeli/German piano duo Yaara Tal & Andreas Groethuysen release "Goetterdaemmerung - Transcriptions for two pianists from Wagner’ most famous operas" on Sony Classical.

This is Toscanini’s only concert in stereo that survives complete. This long-time best seller has been reissued in response to widespread demand and has been digitally remastered. This final concert was recorded in Carnegie Hall on 4th April 1954 and includes Lohengrin Prelude to Act I, Siegfried Forest Murmurs and Götterdämmerung Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey.

Although John Barbirolli made several commercial recordings during his seven years as conductor of the Philharmonic- Symphony Orchestra of New York (as the New York Philharmonic was then formally known), the Barbirolli Society offers us a unique oportunity with this issue of an off-the-air recording of a Wagner concert, performed in Carnegie Hall in November 1938. It comes as a valuable reminder of an important period of his career, one moreover which has come to be regarded, superficially and misleadingly, as a failure. The orchestra was immediately won over by Barbirolli’s personality and remained devoted to him. If these tough players – once known as ‘Murder Incorporated’ – had not liked him and respected his musicianship, it would have been impossible for the manager Arthur Judson, within five days of JB’s first concert, to have begun to mention a permanent appointment. On 7 December 1936, after five weeks’ work with the orchestra, the board offered him a three-year contract and this was renewed in 1940 for a further two years, by which time the war was a complicating factor. JB himself was overwhelmed and wrote to his future wife Evelyn Rothwell on 11 December 1936: ‘The orchestra played tonight as something I have dreamed of. . . The emotion of the orchestra at my appointment is something too touching for words. I can’t believe I am worthy of all this.’ The orchestra’s first horn player spoke of ‘the joy’ of making music with Barbirolli.

Early recordings of favourite Wagner orchestral selections still possess a special mystique. Five conducting giants, all born within 20 years of Wagner's death and all of whom made notable appearances at the Bayreuth Festival, are represented in this collection. Especially notable is the comparison between Hans Knappertsbusch's youthful exuberance for Polydor in 1927-28 and his final moving studio documents (on the Westminster label, in stereo) of 1962. Also featured: Furtwängler, de Sabata, Elmendorff and Jochum.