Wagner: Tristan Und Isolde Orchestral Passion, Liebesverbot, Die Feen Overtures [Hybrid SACD]

The problem with this set is not that it is an orchestral reduction of a pivotal score in the history of music. That has been done before. Many of our parents and grandparents would not have known Wagner at all were it not for the "Orchestral Syntheses" of Stokowski 80 years ago. Maazel has done his Ring without Words for Telarc. All of this is to avoid Tovey's "bleeding chunks" while giving "the rest of us" access to Wagner's greatest music if we don't have access to the Met. OK, so an orchestral version is defensible and has been for almost a hundred years.

The real PROBLEM here is the irony of the title of the album vs. the way Järvi chooses to conduct this music -- hurried, rushed, and almost totally without passion. After all Tristan is all about passion. Heqq if all the doings of the Liebesnacht were actually presented on stage it would X Rated. What this interpretation is lacking is exactly the "feeling" that is its reason for being.

The sound is Chandos gorgeous. The playing is beautiful. The the tempos are all wrong. If you want Tristan for orchestra, do a playlist of Stokowski's orchestral recordings: Prelude from the Royal Philharmonic; Liebesnacht from the Philadelphia Orchestra; Act III Prelude from the Symphony of the Air; finally, the Liebestod from the Royal Philharmonic, again. In my playlist I ended the Liebesnacht at 15:27, sequed to the Act III Prelude, then jumped to the Liebestod. THAT orchestral passion takes about 42 minutes and gives me a fine Tristan fix when I don't have 4 1/2 hours for the opera (where I have two complete CD recordings plus two complete video recordings).

Wagner was one of the three or four great orchestrators of music history. The desire to hear and concentrate on the Wagner writing for orchestra is valid and defensible. But Järvi needs more time in the pit rather than the orchestral podium -- or something. He just doesn't communicate the drama of it all.

(P.S. Stokowski didn't spend much time in the pit, either. But there was never any doubt about his understanding of the passion of the Romantic period of music.)

Hey Chandos,

What gave you the idea that anyone at all would be interested in some nobody's butchery of Wagner?

Do us a favour please, gather all the rarieties together and release them as Wagner wrote them and I promise you, I'll be first in line to buy.

Best...

This is another win for SACD/DSD. Very listenable, no listener fatigue. Sonically clean, precise, and musical. I wish more people had a chance to hear SACD on a good analog multi-channel system.