Wagner: Highlights from 'The Ring'

Peter Wimberger (Performer), Richard [Classical] Wagner (Composer), Zubin Mehta (Conductor), New York Philharmonic (Performer, Orchestra), Montserrat Caballé (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Peter Wimberger, New York Philharmonic, Montserrat Caballé
• Orchestra: New York Philharmonic
• Conductor: Zubin Mehta
• Composer: Richard [Classical] Wagner
• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000026OJ
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #325,657 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #68 in Music > Classical > Opera & Vocal > Divas > Caballe, Montserrat

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a hit and miss affair, June 18, 2000

By 

Ray Barnes (Surrey, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wagner: Highlights from 'The Ring' (Audio CD)

Most of the items on this recording are very well done and recorded, but regrettably the CD is let down by Caballe's peformance in the Immolation Scene. I am an admirer of her work as many others are, but find her German is not very idiomatic (one could make the same observations about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's Italian), and she does not sing the top notes cleanly but scoops them from below instead. In this price range you could do better with the Bohm, Solti, or Karajan - or perhaps Szell best of all - highlights recordings.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My first Wagner CD and it remains a favourite, July 10, 2006

By 

Mr. Allan K. Steel (Sydney, AUS) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wagner: Highlights from 'The Ring' (Audio CD)

I got this 16 years ago and it was my very first Wagner CD.

Now I have a large number of Wagner CDs but this remains a favourite.

There are many arrangements of Ring excerpts around, but this has the best versions, in my view, especially for Dawn & RJ.

Mehta's pacing is excellent, particularly for the Goetterdaemmerung tracks, and the sound is superb: so much detail is revealed very clearly.

The Immolation Scene with Caballe was recorded separately (the stereo placing is clearly different from the others) and she is nothing like a Nilsson, but it's OK.

So, overall, a wonderful introduction to some of the key Highlights of the Ring.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just remove the Immolation Scene, September 21, 2008

By 

Aanel Victoria (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wagner: Highlights from 'The Ring' (Audio CD)

This is a most excellent album, marred by the fact that when the cassette version was adapted to CD length, a recording of Caballé singing the Immolation Scene was tacked on to fill out the length. This is unfortunate, because it mars the perfect artistry and artistic integrity of the original, and of the rest of the CD. My recommendation is to obtain the CD but rerecord it, excising Caballé's singing track, which I frankly find unlistenable, not to mention terribly out of place in an album of Ring instrumentals.

Other than that, the CD is great, and Mehta is the perfect interpreter of this haunting, inspiring, delicious music. It's a terrible shame that the album was mucked about with like this in making the CD, but rerecording it on your own will eliminate this problem.