Rattle Wagner

Following the 2015 release of "The Rhinegold" – the Vorabend or „preliminary evening“ of Richard Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" – and of "The Valkyrie" in 2019, BR-KLASSIK is now releasing "Siegfried" as the second day of the enthusiastically received tetralogy under Sir Simon Rattle - recorded live on February 3 and 5, 2023 at Munich's Isarphilharmonie im Gasteig. With "The Rheingold", Rattle had already decisively refuted the longstanding claim that he and Wagner were not a good match, and with "The Valkyrie", he dispelled any remaining doubts.

Everything the conductor Sir Simon Rattle touches "turns to gold". Everything except for the music dramas of Richard Wagner, that is! It has often been asserted, albeit without good reason, that Rattle and Wagner do not go together. This has now been conclusively disproved by the third collaboration between Rattle and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, together with a team of the very best Wagner singers. This concert performance of "Das Rheingold", the first opera in Wagner's mighty tetralogy "The Ring of the Nibelung", was performed in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz on April 24 and 25, 2015, and has now been brought out by BR KLASSIK on two CDs just a few months after the live event.

Following the 2015 release of "The Rhinegold" – the Vorabend or „preliminary evening“ of Richard Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" – and of "The Valkyrie" in 2019, BR-KLASSIK is now releasing "Siegfried" as the second day of the enthusiastically received tetralogy under Sir Simon Rattle - recorded live on February 3 and 5, 2023 at Munich's Isarphilharmonie im Gasteig. With "The Rheingold", Rattle had already decisively refuted the longstanding claim that he and Wagner were not a good match, and with "The Valkyrie", he dispelled any remaining doubts. His recent performance of “Siegfried” – with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and a first-class lineup of Wagner singers – proves yet again how well the conductor understands and is able to interpret Wagner's music. Now, just a few months after the live event, this powerful and immensely popular music drama has been released on three outstanding CDs.

The year 1812 was a busy year for the well-known but deaf composer Ludwig van Beethoven. At last, Beethoven got the chance to meet that other famous German, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but Goethe’s personality proved a disappointed to Beethoven.

Over a career, including extended tenures with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Simon Rattle has become recognized as one of the world's top conductors. Mostly focusing on symphonic music, he has also conducted major operatic productions. A native of Liverpool, Rattle was born on January 19, 1955. He studied piano, violin, and percussion as a youngster, joining the Merseyside Youth Orchestra as a percussionist and later playing with Britain's National Youth Orchestra. He gravitated naturally toward conducting, taking up the baton in his early teens and founding his own orchestra, the Liverpool Sinfonia, when he was just 15.

“The English horn needs a soft, round vibrato… We are among those who can move people to tears,” says Dominik Wollenweber about his instrument. Let us not be misled by the humble conduct, and the absence of laudatory articles and glossy photographs. Wollenweber is one of the world’s finest cor anglais players. Claudio Abbado has even labelled him the “best player of all time”.

In his debut recording on LSO Live, Sir Simon Rattle conducts a stunning performance of Schumanns rarely recorded Das Paradies und die Peri featuring a superb line-up of soloists. Rattle is well-known for being a champion of this rarely-heard work, and yet this is the first audio recording he has made of it. Here it is brought to life by the LSO under his baton, and the starry line-up makes the best possible case for Schumanns great oratorio. Sir Simon Rattle says of the piece, Its the great masterpiece youve never heard, and there arent many of those now.

Previous Brilliant Classics albums by this Dutch string orchestra, based in The Hague, have focused on late-Romantic ‘American Pioneers’ (96086) and composers in early 20th-century Paris (95734). Under their founder-director Dick van Gasteren, they now turn to the rich history of Rhineland music from the high-point of its immortalisation in operatic culture as the bedrock of Wagner’s Ring cycle.