The glory and the humdrum: what a mismatch! | Overtures & Preludes

Great Music At Any Price! | Overtures & Preludes | Wagner, Kempe, ...

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	• Overtures & Preludes Wagner, Kempe, ... Seraphim, 1995 average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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Highest Recommendation Possible

I have been ravenously studying classical music for about the last two years non stop. It has been a fantastic voyage. Out of everything by everyone, to me, this is among the very best CDs. The music is beautiful, mighty and majestic. On top of that, the CD is very inexpensive, considering it's quality.

The glory and the humdrum: what a mismatch!

The Kempe tracks are glorious. I recall Lenny Bernstein once puffing himself on how slow he played the Prelude of Tristan in his complete recording. But it broke apart under its own sheer weight. Kempe shows how it's done. You can go this slowly if the passion wells up from the inside and heats up the melodies to melting point. Then you can get carried away by the illusion that the flow is much faster than clock time tells you. This is absolutely marvellous!
The Parsifal pieces are not far behind. The massive Vienna brass is at its glorious best, and for once the trumpet at the beginning comes through clean, instead of shattering your ear drums. Slow tempo again, but full of weight and yet subtly wrought as a flowing texture. These are immensely eloquent performances, something to make you believe that studio recordings can be a blessing.
I cannot image what induced the producers to fill up this disk with the Boult performances. The original LP of Kempe had more music on it, what happened to it? This Boult Lohengrin is a sleepy affair, precisely because it is so fast that you wonder where all the splendour of this beautiful is gone. The Tannhäuser is routine conducting. You might hear this quality of music making on any afternoon in the concert hall or on a dozen records by less well-known conductors.
So: half of the disc is inspired Wagnerian music making, the other half perfunctory discharge of duty. As an album it represents the worst of ignorance by the packaging department.

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Great Music At Any Price!

The original EMI Seraphim budget CD line has to be the greatest value for the money in the history of music. For half the price of other so-called budget lines, including the new version of EMI Seraphim and the Sony Essential Classics series, you get first-rate performances from the golden age of stereo by some of the greatest conductors of the century. On this particular title you get brilliant Wagner performances by Rudolf Kempe and Sir Adrian Boult. This was my first disc of Wagner Orchestral Music, and I liked it so much that I eventually upgraded in order to get more terrific Wagner performances by Kempe and Boult (see my reviews). You see, Boult has a two-disc mid-priced set collecting his Wagner recordings on EMI, while Kempe has two full-priced discs on the Testament label, which licensed his EMI recordings. Granted, most will not want to pay as much as I did for their Wagner, and if you don't, just buy this title with the loose change in your pocket.

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Tracks
Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Prelude and Liebestod | Parsifal, opera, WWV 111: Prelude to Act I | Parsifal, opera, WWV 111: Good Friday Music | Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, opera, WWV 96: Prelude to Act III | Lohengrin, opera, WWV 75: Prelude to Act I | Tannhäuser, opera, WWV 70: Overture