Wagner Meistesinger

Some have likened Herbert von Karajan's "chamber-music approach" to Wagner's Ring cycle in terms of his scaling down or deconstructing the heroic roles. This approach has less to do with dynamics per se than it does with von Karajan's masterful balancing of voices and instruments. He achieves revelations of horizontal clarity, allowing no contrapuntal strand to emerge with an unwanted accent or a miscalibrated dynamic. The texts are unusually pinpointed and distinct, although the singers don't convey the experience and dimension of Sir Georg Solti's cast on London. There are exceptions.

This album hums and growls, it whispers very delicately and causes a pleasant feeling again and again. It is the warm, deep and full tone of the double bass that has taken hold of the young Viennese soloist Dominik Wagner. This is already the fourth album he is releasing on the label Berlin Classics. As on the three previous albums, he has placed the double bass at the center, and yet everything is different on the new album "Double Bass Rhapsody". Here, the double bass is heard exclusively as a solo instrument, in a quartet and even in a sextet. For this, Dominik Wagner has enlisted the best colleagues he can imagine: Christoph Wimmer and Herbert Mayr, both principal double bassists of the Vienna Philharmonic, who share with him an authentic connection to the Viennese style. And José Trigo, deputy principal double bass of the BR Symphony Orchestra, who, like Dominik Wagner, also studied with Professor Dorin Marc. "In order to bring out the special features of the double bass, there is no need for any other instrument" explains Dominik Wagner.

Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. Indeed, though Wagner occasionally produced successful music written on a relatively modest scale, opera – the bigger, the better – was clearly his milieu, and his aesthetic is perhaps the most grandiose that Western music has ever known. Early in his career, Wagner learned both the elements and the practical, political realities of his craft by writing a handful of operas which were unenthusiastically, even angrily, received. © Rovi Staff /TiVo

Virtuoso repertoire, brilliantly arranged: Dominik Wagner will release his Bottesini album 'Revolution of Bass' via Berlin Classics on 29th of October 2021. He presents the solo Double Bass Concerto No 1 in F sharp minor as well as two duets with Benjamin Schmid on violin and Jeremias Fliedl on cello. Additionally some bonustracks featuring soprano and piano have been recorded. The musicians will be accompanied by the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn under Emmanuel Tjeknavorian a great wish of Dominik Wagner, who played the first concert together with Tjeknavorian ten years ago and has been close friends with him ever since.

James Levine's is a more recent entry in the realm of Dutchman recordings, and sonically the recording is absolutely stunning, with great attention having been paid to the recording process. The casting for this Metropolitan Opera effort is also uniformly first rate, even in the less grateful roles of the hapless Erik, sung by the impressive Ben Heppner, and the scolding nurse, Mary, sung by Birgitta Svendén. Morris's brooding Dutchman is hard to match on any other available recording, and Deborah Voigt is a ravishing Senta. The chorus work is quite good, though not quite as rich as that heard in the Solti/Chicago recording. Overall, Levine does a workmanlike job of conducting these impressive forces, though there are passages in which his tempi seem to drag. This recording is a must for anyone who needs a completely up to date version of Wagner's first major opera.

Wagner at The Met is the first authorized release of Richard Wagner's operatic masterpieces, including the complete Ring Cycle, captured live in historic broadcasts from The Metropolitan Opera.