Wagner Isolde

This 1928 recording–with several cuts, particularly in the last act, which is cut in half–is a great curiosity. (As a bonus, the third CD, after the abbreviated last act, contains about 40 minutes of the last act in an excellent 1927 performance starring Walter Widdop and Gota Ljungberg and a brief but enlightening discussion of Wagner's leitmotifs and their uses by scholar Ernest Newman.) The two leads, Gunnar Graarud as Tristan and Nanny Larsen-Todsen as Isolde, are more lyric-voiced singers than we're used to in this music, and so the performance seems somehow more intimate (I doubt they would have been as effective in the theater as they are on this recording). Anny Helm is a thrilling Brangaene, and the others are good.

I can remember watching a recording of this production and being somewhat put off by the staging, the light show during the opening prelude and the modern staging and dress. It made the star-struck lovers seem more like a frumpy middle-aged couple on a cruise than people passionately in love, especially in their apparent lack of intimacy. They seldom touched each other. It just did not sit well with me, but that was my personal point of view. Even so, I was quite taken with the sound of the production and by strong performances by all the protagonists.

Although this is a re-issue, and not a re-mastering, everyone with any interest in Wagner, and Tristan and Isolde, simply must have this wonderful set. To be fair, it's really all about Linda Esther Gray, and the outstanding WNO under Goodall. The WNO are brilliant here, and sympathetically recorded by the Decca engineers. You'll hear subtleties in the playing that are lost in other versions, and you can forget about Goodall's supposed ultra-slow tempi, for here he's surely perfect. (The Prelude is actually over a minute faster than Karajan.) But it's Goodall's handling of key moments that is so seductive - and thrilling.

This production of Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” was recorded during the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s great tour to Japan in 1993. Directed by Götz Friedrich and conducted by Jiří Kout, this interpretation of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Isolde was a great success. Wagner’s composition of “Tristan und Isolde” was inspired by his love affair with Mathilde Wesendonck and the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

When we turn to live recordings, we enter another world, one in which the performances have, on the whole, a greater consistency of thought and execution. That applies in spades to the famous Bayreuth set of 1966. Karl Böhm's swift, incandescent, very theatrical interpretation isn't to everyone's liking. Yet, for all the fast speeds, the charge of superficiality is misplaced. Böhm's direct, cogently thought through reading, in which tempo relationships, inner figures (as one might expect from a Mozart and Strauss specialist), and instrumental detail are all carefully exposed and related to each other, offers rich rewards. Expressive intensity is here married ideally to a transparency of texture.

Most notable is a Liebestod of superbly controlled intensity. In the Narrative and Curse the exultant, passionate power of Varnay's singing exposes one hint of mannerism—a tendency to press too hard on certain syllables, and to seem, in consequence, an Isolde more unyielding than volatile. The difficulty a great Wagnerian can have in scaling her voice down is most noticeable in the first of the Wesendonk Lieder: Varnay is best in the rapt, inner intensity of No. 3, "Im Treibhaus". Such inner intensity is also abundant in the long extract from Act 2 of Tristan.

Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig conclude their award-winning Bruckner cycle. Starting in 2017 with Symphony No. 3, the cycle has received countless superlatives and garnered the 2017 Edison Klassiek Award. Each symphony has been considerately paired with music by Wagner. In this final instalment of the cycle, Nelsons complements Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5 with the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde".

Transfiguration is acclaimed star soprano Camilla Nylund’s much-awaited first album of arias. This CD portrays the lyric-dramatic soprano with famous arias and scenes from operas by Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, including the grueling final scenes from Tristan und Isolde and from Salome. The featured arias reflect the lyrical and dramatic facets of Camilla Nylund’s current roles at such venues as Staatsoper Dresden, Vienna State Opera, and Bayreuther Festspiele. The Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra is led by their chief conductor Hannu Lintu.