Der Optiker

When this recording of Der fliegende Holländer first appeared in 1968, Gramophone magazine declared it “as perfect as we have any right to demand”. Otto Klemperer conceives the score on an epic scale, and Theo Adam, reaching deep into the heart of the world-weary Dutchman, meets his match in the young and incandescent Senta of Anja Silja.

Gentle and haunting spirits from distant spheres meet in a surging world of dreams and lullabies in 'The Girl and the Angel, a musical narrative'. This work interweaves a new story by bestselling author Cornelia Funke with expressive new compositions by Luna Pearl Woolf and familiar and popular songs by Irving Berlin, Lennon / McCartney, Jake Heggie, Engelbert Humperdinck, Gordon Getty and others. Cornelia Funke herself captures her story with rousing songs by Frederica von Stade, Daniel Taylor, Lisa Delan and Zhen Cao, accompanied by the lush cellos of Matt Haimovitz and his Uccello ensemble.

In his liner-notes to Hermann Max’s C.P.E Bach oratorio Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu the German musicologist Peter Wollny writes: "In the second half of the eighteenth century the German oratorio was marked by two characteristics. The tendency toward a highly individual depiction of emotions and the avoidance of dramatic operatic plots." Therefore composers turned away from stories from the Old Testament which were so successfully used, for instance, by Handel for his dramatic oratorios, and focused rather on the person of Jesus Christ. Bach's oratorio Die Israeliten in der Wüste seems to contradict this statement.

‘This performance is as perfect as we have any right to demand. Klemperer’s magisterial interpretation of the opera has a blazing intensity, the orchestra plays superbly and the cast give of their considerable best.’ - Gramophone