Customer Reviews

Richard Strauss: Scenes from Salome & Elektra [Hybrid SACD]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great issue in this SACD series. Borkh has just the right sound for Elektra and Salome. Reiner backs her up perfectly. The CSO is in top form. Listen to the brass and you can be in heaven or hell.(Depends on your taste for his operas.)

Absolutely outstanding. The DSD remastering is phenominal!!

Hey there, fans of Strauss and Reiner, this is a phenomenal recording no doubt, but I have to warn people that this Hybrid SACD doesn't sound as good in a standard CD player as the earlier version of this recording.

Of course if you have a SACD player, you should buy this thing, but if you are like most people who have standard stereos, the original release will sound superior in your normal CD player than the Hybrid SACD. Trust me on this one, I am a perfectionist and an audiophile.

These performances are amazing! The soundstage simply disappears out both sidedoors of the auditorium. If you don't like singing the Dance of the Seven Veils is so good it justifies the cost. One of the great performances of all time!

Some folks may say, "I don't want just excerpts of these operas." They will be missing some absolutely hair-raising music-making. The first time I heard these performances, on a Gold Seal LP reissue, I sat there with my mouth hanging open the whole time. This is just riveting stuff, intense, passionate, superbly controlled, and spectacularly recorded. Elektra was probably never done this well before and may never be done this well again. Not to be missed.

This recording is one of a kind!
Inge Borkh made her début at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1954 with this role and stamp her interpretation of it which have never been obscured or surpassed by any singer who bite into this role ever since, not even the great Birgit Nilsson.

A short example of this legendary singer ability to set a mood and "drama" in a short phrase or even in one word, is, the utterance of "wachten...?! (Guard-watch), when Electra first encounters her unrecognized brother, a stranger who is watching the palace from the outside. It is a manner of half singing half speaking/acting which is in her voice.
And an actress Ms. Inge Borkh was; beginning her stage appearances on the theater stage and took operatic singing few years later (trained in Italy).

The voices has quite a substantial volume and a full lower and mid register with the high notes in complete pitch, very secured and together with Borkh ability to maneuver acting into the singing voice all this made her most unique in the way Callas would put characterization into the singing phrase. In that sense Borkh can be described as the German-Callas in the manner in which she specialized in acting/singing troubled heroines that are half insane or hunted.
One of her greatest roles besides Electra and Salome was Medea which she sung in German.

Most unfortunate is that at the peak of her singing carrier she shunted away from the recording studios, so we are left with only a few of her recordings of which this RCA Living-Stereo is a masterful example.

The recording of Electra was made in 1956 with the CSO/Reiner; it features the three most important scenes from Electra and the closing scene from Salome made in 1955, and the Salome dance of the seven veils recorded in 1954 - one of the very early RCA stereos and a magnificent two tracks recording, as the rest of the oeuvres presented on this SACD are (two tracks).
The SACD has a full-range dynamic full-presence presentation, typical of the enormous/huge sound-stage RCA Living-Stereo offering from the dawn of the stereo era.

We are lucky to have this stereo analogue tape from the fifties survive and we are lucky to have a superb SACD version of it made by dedicated team of engineers who used tube gear in the analogue to digital transfer chain.

Any one with affinity to opera recording should grab the SACD (all of the various RCA Living-Stereo SACDs are limited edition), So, grab them before stocks are exhausted, as Sony stopped the making those, fired the transfer to SACD team. No more RCA Living-Stereo SACDs, no more superb sound; a most regrettable decision that Sony made.

As things are now, the dice has fallen; no more RCA Living-Stereo releases in SACD.

I agree with an earlier reviewer about the SACD sound being a problem on convetional CD players. I've had problems with other RCA/BMG SACD releases as well. If you have a conventional CD player, you may want to play it safe and get the regular version (assuming it's still around). But do try and find it, as these are among the best Strauss vocal recordings ever made. For many of us, Reiner and Borkh "owned" this music, and my only regret is that they didn't get a chance to record the complete operas commercially. A true classic.

Strauss aspired to interpret the high points of European culture. Elektra is his Götterdämmerung in the same way that Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflöte were interpreted in his later operas.

As an heir to Wagner, Strauss had the virtues of bringing the psychology of real people into a Wagnerian style of music and of getting to the point. Lorin Maazel distilled Wagner's instrumental essence in Der Ring ohne Worte, and Strauss and Hofmannsthal add the words back in Elektra, explaining from an intimately human point of view why the criminal gods must die.

Reiner's disk performs only the opera's high points in a concert setting, avoiding the distractions of staging and allowing a take-no-prisoners attack on the music. It's fitting: Orestes didn't take prisoners either.

This is material that merits being heard in SACD format through audiophile hifi equipment.

Fantastic. Different as I remember foim initial release in Australia in early 80s. I think many cuts were made for political reasons.