Julia Varady ~ Wagner - Wesendonck-Lieder, Tristan und Isolde, Götterdämmerung [Import]

Richard [Classical] Wagner (Composer), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Conductor), Berlin Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Julia Varady (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Julia Varady
• Orchestra: Berlin Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
• Composer: Richard [Classical] Wagner
• Audio CD (September 16, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Orfeo
• ASIN: B000007TLQ
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #222,983 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Wesendonk Lieder, songs (5) for voice & piano (or orchestra), WWV 91: No. 1, 'Der Engel': 'In der Kindheit fruhen Tagen'

2. Wesendonk Lieder, songs (5) for voice & piano (or orchestra), WWV 91: No. 2, 'Stehe still!': 'Sausendes, brausendes Rad der Zeit'

3. Wesendonk Lieder, songs (5) for voice & piano (or orchestra), WWV 91: No. 3, 'Im Treibhaus': 'Hochgewolbte Blatterkronen'

4. Wesendonk Lieder, songs (5) for voice & piano (or orchestra), WWV 91: No. 4, 'Schmerzen': 'Sonne, weinest jeden Abend dir die schonen

5. Wesendonk Lieder, songs (5) for voice & piano (or orchestra), WWV 91: No. 5, 'Traume': 'Sag, welch wunderbare Traume'

6. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Vorspiel zum 1. Aufzug

7. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Mild und leise - Isoldes Liebestod

8. Die Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), opera, WWV 86d: Siegfrieds Rheinfahrt

9. Die Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), opera, WWV 86d: Starke Scheite richtet mir dort - Brünnhildes Schlußgesang

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best recording of the Wesendonk Lieder since Janet Baker's., May 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Julia Varady ~ Wagner - Wesendonck-Lieder, Tristan und Isolde, Götterdämmerung (Audio CD)

Rumanian soprano Julia Varady has long been famed for her performances of Strauss, Mozart, and Verdi, but here, recorded late in her illustrious career--she retired from the stage last year--she shows herself to be the day's preeminent Wagnerian soprano. No thundering Nilsson or Flagstad she: Her voice is slender and gleaming in the silver-toned manner of Gundala Janowitz and she uses it with a Schwarzkopf-like intelligence that doesn't preclude deep emotional warmth and a heady spontaneity. The Wesendonk Lieder receive their finest recorded performance since Janet Baker's famous--and sadly unavailable--recording from the sixties. Varady pays scrupulous heed to musical values while articulating the text with an unemphatic attention to detail and an unexaggerated understanding of meaning worthy of her husband, the great lieder singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who here conducts the Desutches Symphony Orchestra in a glowing but clear-eyed and resolutely unsentimental accompaniment. As if this weren't enough, Varady, who would never sing Brunnhilde or Isolde on stage, gives thrilling accounts of both heroines final scenes--warm, womanly, cutting through the orchestral textures with rapturously beautiful, unstinting, and unstrained tone. Altogether a disk for every Wagnerian and every lover of the art of singing to treasure.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent performance, December 29, 2003

By 

"henryjohnson2534" (CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Julia Varady ~ Wagner - Wesendonck-Lieder, Tristan und Isolde, Götterdämmerung (Audio CD)

This recital disc was made in 1997. It is amazing how Varady's voice is so pure and beautiful. Simply amazing. Her account of the Immolation scene and Liebestod is among the finest ever made!! This disc was nominated for a Gramophone award, and it sure deserves its nomination. A magnificent achievement.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfectly realized, April 3, 2008

By 

Khrysserx "khrysserx" (Zaandam, Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Julia Varady ~ Wagner - Wesendonck-Lieder, Tristan und Isolde, Götterdämmerung (Audio CD)

I just got this recording, I'm ashamed to say that, although I was familiar with the operas, I hadn't heard the Wesendonck Lieder previously. But it's hard to imagine a more impassioned performance than this one. Julia Varady's voice is the superb instrument for Wagner's late Romantic style, and the conducting of the orchestra by Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau is top rate, despite what another reviewer has stated here. I heartily recommend this to anyone interested in some of the more obscure corners of Wagner's oeuvre.