Fading Glory: Matthew Rye is doubtful about the wisdom of a highlights disc
Fading Glory: Matthew Rye is doubtful about the wisdom of a highlights disc
Reviews of Der Ring des Nibelungen, highlights, conducted Fisch (Melba, 2 hybrid SACDs); Liszt Wagner Paraphrases: Liszt ‘Am stillen Herd’ (Die Meistersinger), Spinning Song (Der fliegende Holländer), Pilgrims’ Chorus (Tannhäuser), ‘O du, mein holder Abendstern’ (Tannhäuser), Arrival of the Guests at the Wartburg (Tannhäuser), Elsa’s Bridal Procession to the Minster (Lohengrin), Isolde’s Liebestod (Tristan und Isolde), Wagner ’Albumblatt für Frau Betty Scott’, ’Ankunft bei den schwarzen Schwänen’, Albumblatt ‘In das Album der Fürstin M.’, piano Fisch (Melba, 1 CD).
March 2013, Volume 7, Number 1, 84–5.
I’m not quite sure at whom this two-disc set of highlights from the 2004 State Opera of South Australia Ring is aimed. Presumably everyone swept up in its achievement at the time has the complete recording, released in 2007 (Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were reviewed in The Wagner Journal, ii/1 (2008), 86). Maybe it’s a pre-emptive strike against the imminent PentaTone cycle from Berlin, which will do away with Melba’s exclusivity in having the only surround-sound, SACD recording of the Ring in the catalogue. In any case, aren’t operatic highlights discs rather 1970s?