Recording Recommendation: The Shoe-String Ring

Valhalla on just $1.50 a day.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The original cover of Die Walküre. Clearly not marketing the music.
All Photos by Christopher Whorf © 1968, the artist.

Hans Swarowsky's recording of the complete Ring Cycle was made in 1968 in Nuremberg. The sessions were a by-product of the Soviet invasion of Prague, which forced most of the Czech Philharmonic to flee to southern Germany. Under Mr. Swarowsky, the so-called "South German Philharmonic" dashed off these recordings quickly, releasing the entire cycle on the budget Westminster Gold label as a bargain-basement alternative to the Decca Ring with Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic.

How My Collection Started

A Reflection, on Wagner's Birthday.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Parsifal that started it all.
Inset photograph © 1985 Bayreuth Festspiele.

It all started with what I wanted for Christmas in 1993.

"Mom, I want the Richard Wagner Edition of Parsifal with James Levine conducting."

"OK." Mom was happy that my classes at Fordham (including The Age of Beethoven and Wagner and Wagnerism the year before had led to such a fruitful musical interest in her only son."

Recordings Review: Efficient German Sex

Marek Janowski's Berlin Tristan und Isolde.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Love, Cornwall Style. This is a detail from Salvador Dali's Mad Tristan, created
as a ballet backdrop for the Metropolitan Opera in 1944.
Image © 1944 The Estate of Salvador Dali.

Marek Janowski's new recording of Tristan und Isolde has arrived, marking the midpoint of the conductor's ambitious plan to issue new live recordings of the ten mature Wagner operas on the PentaTone label in a three-year time-frame. (In case you're wondering, Tannhäuser is next.)

Recordings Review: Jogging through Nuremberg

Marek Janowski's brisk new Meistersinger.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

It's a concert recording, so you'll just have to imagine Ye Olde Nuremberg.

This live recording of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was made in Berlin at a June 3, 2011 concert performance by the talented, underrated Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Led by veteran Wagnerian Marek Janowski, it is the first of a 10-opera project to preserve new digital version of the composer's mature operas over two years.

DVD Review: The Horror of Das Rheingold

Part One of the Copenhagen Ring.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Danny Olsen as the swimming title character in Das Rheingold. 
Photo by Martin Mydstkov © 2006 Royal Danish Opera/Decca

In a world where opera companies fall over themselves to stage Wagner's four-part Der Ring des Nibelungen, it is rare to see a new production that actually has something valid to say. If this  Das Rheingold (filmed at the Royal Danish Opera in 2006) is any indication, director Kasper Bech Holten may have accomplished this difficult feat with his Copenhagen Ring, available on DVD from Decca. He stands on the shoulders of directors who have come before (particularly Patrice Chéreau and Harry Kupfer) but fuses these theatrical ideas into a new, exciting whole to make an impressive start to this Ring.