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NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini Broadcast live on 28th November, 1943, NBC Studio 8H, New York Pristine Audio XR remastering by Andrew Rose, June 2007 Download ID: 319436 (Duration 52'02") A Pristine Audio Natural Sound restoration Scroll down for PDF covers and cue-sheet download Previously unissued live concert recording More: Toscanini at Pristine Classical

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"...possibly the best available Toscanini-led Tannhäuser Overture and Venusberg Music and Tristan Prelude and Liebestod..." - Rob Cowan, Gramophone, December 2007

 

Wagner Concert Programme:

• Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Prelude to Act 3
• Tannhäuser: Overture and Venusberg Music
• Tristan und Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod
• Die Valküre: Ride of the Valkyries

Restorer's notes: This recording, transcribed from acetate discs of unusually high quality, presents a truly remarkable document of Toscanini's mid-40's conducting, perhaps all the more so for being an all-Wagner concert, broadcast at the height of World War II. It responded excellently to the tonal rebalancing inherent in the XR process, bringing out a full-frequency tonal response, and my main work was in dealing with occasional radio interference and, at times, unpleasant surface noise. I'm pleased to report that these have been either eradicated or reduced to the extent that they no longer interrupt the listener as had previously been the case. I suspect these interruptions, which only the latest computer software is capable of succesfully tackling, may constitute one good reason why this excellent concert has not been heard in public since its first broadcast some 64 years ago.

Wagner's music for Opera

Wagner's music dramas are his primary artistic legacy. These can be divided chronologically into three periods.

Wagner's early stage began at age 19 with his first attempt at an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which Wagner abandoned at an early stage of composition in 1832. Wagner's three completed early-stage operas are Die Feen (The Fairies), Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), and Rienzi. Their compositional style was conventional, and did not exhibit the innovations that marked Wagner's place in musical history. Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these immature works to be part of his oeuvre; he was irritated by the ongoing popularity of Rienzi during his lifetime. These works are seldom performed, though the overture to Rienzi has become a concert piece.

Wagner's middle stage output is considered to be of remarkably higher quality, and begins to show the deepening of his powers as a dramatist and composer. This period began with Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), followed by Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. These works are widely performed today.

Wagner's late stage operas are his masterpieces that advanced the art of opera. Some are of the opinion that Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Iseult) is Wagner's greatest single opera. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) is Wagner's only comedy (apart from his early and forgotten Das Liebesverbot) and one of the lengthiest operas still performed. Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring cycle, is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Teutonic myth, particularly from later period Norse mythology. Taking around 20 years to complete, and requiring roughly 15 hours to perform, the Ring cycle has been called the most ambitious musical work ever composed. Wagner's final opera, Parsifal, which was written especially for the opening of Wagner's Festspielhaus in Bayreuth and which is described in the score as a "Bühnenweihfestspiel" (festival play for the consecration of the stage), is a contemplative work based on the Christian legend of the Holy Grail.

Wagner drew largely from Northern European mythology and legend, notably Icelandic epics such as the Poetic Edda, the Volsunga Saga and the later German Nibelungenlied. Through his operas and theoretical essays, Wagner exerted a strong influence on the operatic medium. He was an advocate of a new form of opera which he called "music drama", in which all the musical and dramatic elements were fused together. Unlike other opera composers, who generally left the task of writing the libretto (the text and lyrics) to others, Wagner wrote his own libretti, which he referred to as "poems". Further, Wagner developed a compositional style in which the orchestra's role is equal to that of the singers. The orchestra's dramatic role includes its performance of the leitmotifs, musical themes that announce specific characters, locales, and plot elements; their complex interleaving and evolution illuminates the progression of the drama.

Wagner's musical style is often considered the epitome of classical music's Romantic period, due to its unprecedented exploration of emotional expression. He introduced new ideas in harmony and musical form, including extreme chromaticism. In Tristan und Isolde, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system that gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to atonality in the 20th century. Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of Tristan, the so-called Tristan chord.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Find out more:   Tristan und Isolde - Prelude (excerpt) About Wagner: Wikipedia Wagner Operas Bayreuth Festival Website CD covers to print:   CD-writing cuesheet: [What's that?] Download our Illustrated Catalogue Complete catalogue of recordings, fully indexed by composer and performer, with links to website pages Restoration by Andrew Rose:

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