Search - Wagner, Beecham, London Philharmonic Orchestra :: Scenes From Gotterdammerung

The greatest singers and a great conductor

Klingsor Tristan | Suffolk | 08/23/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wagner performances don't get much better than this - unless it were a recording of the whole opera with the same forces. Many people in these columns talk about the golden days of Bayreuth in the 50s. Others even speak highly of more recent performances. But this line-up gets the mouth watering just at the thought of it - and it was available at Covent Garden, too. Those pre-war days were undoubtedly the time to be alive for a Wagnerian



Here you have the greatest of all Siegfrieds and Brunnhildes in Leider and Melchior - the oath-taking in Act 2 is just white hot. Add to that a superbly black Hagen in Emanuel List, Kerstin Thorborg's wonderfully sung and vivid story-telling as Waltraute as well as Herbert Janssen's movingly flawed and ultimately broken Gunther. As if that weren't enough, there's a real taste of Beecham conducting Wagner in an opera that suited him better than Tristan.



Unless you're not prepared to settle for less than modern stereo sound or you're a purist who insists on completeness, try this disc. It's wall-to-wall edge-of-the-seat stuff from beginning to end.

"