Dvd Wagner Lohengrin

One of the most acclaimed musicians of his era, Toscanini was a conductor of the "old school" - aristocratic, perfectionistic and something of an autocrat on the podium. After a brief flurry of interest in Fascism in the 1910s, he rapidly became disillusioned with the movement and indeed became a personal rival of Mussolini, repeatedly antagonising him through acts of artistic defiance such as refusals to open concerts with the Fascist anthem Giovinezza.

One of the most acclaimed musicians of his era, Toscanini was a conductor of the "old school" - aristocratic, perfectionistic and something of an autocrat on the podium. After a brief flurry of interest in Fascism in the 1910s, he rapidly became disillusioned with the movement and indeed became a personal rival of Mussolini, repeatedly antagonising him through acts of artistic defiance such as refusals to open concerts with the Fascist anthem Giovinezza.

When these discs were originally released singly in the early '80s, they were not only marvelous recordings of the purely orchestral music from Wagner's operas, they announced the arrival of a marvelous new conductor. At the time, Klaus Tennstedt was known only as the conductor of several astonishingly good recordings of Mahler's symphonies, but his abilities in the standard repertoire were as yet unknown. But with these two discs of recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic, Tennstedt proved that his Mahler was no accident. Indeed, so strong, so central, and so overwhelmingly compelling are his Wagner recordings that his Mahler recordings seem almost accidental. In the disc of excerpts from the Ring operas, Tennstedt is at once immensely dramatic, ecstatically lyrical, and profoundly musical. In the disc of preludes and overtures from Tannhäuser, Rienzi, Lohengrin, and Meistersinger, Tennstedt is at once intensely concentrated, widely expansive, and deeply human. Aided by the super-virtuoso playing of the Berlin Philharmonic and the stupendous impact of EMI's early digital, Tennstedt's Wagner was as fine or finer than any of his contemporaries and nearly in the same league as his predecessors.

One is struck by the fact that the BPO, who must have been through all this music so often, can under a conductor who obviously inspires them, produce playing that is at once so polished and so fresh. One of the very finest Wagner orchestral collections in the catalog.

Volume 2 of EMI's comprehensive Herbert von Karajan centenary edition gathers virtually all of the conductor's operatic and vocal output for the label in one place, taking up 71 CDs (Disc 72 contains complete librettos in the form of PDF files). I use the word "virtually" because the package omits four posthumously issued archival items taped live during the 1957-60 Salzburg Festivals (Beethoven's Missa solemnis, Brahms' German Requiem, Bruckner's Te Deum, and Verdi's Requiem). Otherwise, it's all here.

Back by popular demand, The Toscanini Collection is a reissue of RCA's 1992 compendium that encompassed all of the recordings Toscanini made with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and NBC Symphony. A new addition to this amazing collection is his approved recordings with the BBC Symphony from the 1930s that were not included in the 1992 edition.

2013 sees a series of Wagner reissues on Eloquence from complete operas and highlights to Wagner singer portraits and even an audiobook! This is a 31-year retrospective (1956 – 1987) of great Wagner singing on Decca and Deutsche Grammophon featuring fourteen extracts from nine operas with seven great singers.