一聽音樂網

Karajan is competing with himself in several of these excerpts, which appear on his Wagner collections from DG in the 1980's. Of those later recordings the live one with Jessye Norman is a touching farewell to Wagner from just before Karajan's death. That said, these 1974 readings on EMi far surpass the DG versions for energy and recorded sound. Karajan succeeded Furtwangler as the dominant Wagner conductor of his generation. His Ring cycle was overshadowed by Solti's in the public mind, but there is no comparison between the two--Karajan is in the direct line of inspired Wagnerians going back to Nikisch and Muck, Solti is an exciting theater man who tromps over the landscape.

Amazon doesn't make clear that the program consists of the overtures to Die Meistersinger, Flying Dutchman, and Tannhauser, the latter with a hair-raising version of the Venusberg love music, complete with chorus. We also get the Prelude to Act 1 of Lohengrin and the Prelude and Love-Death from Tristan, much the best of Karajan's several recordings over the decades.

What sets these readings apart is their increidble virtuosity, Karajan's total mastery of line, the excellent recorded sound, and a sense of inner life in every bar. That last quality marked Furtwangler's Wagner but wasn't always present in Karajan's--those later DG recordings lack it, for example. But Furtwangler's Wagner is hampered by mono sound, and his Berlin Phil. cannot match Karajan's for power and ensemble. I'm taking nothing away from Klemperer's traversal of these same excerpts for EMI, another glorious experience, by saying that if a desert-island CD had to be chosen, this would be it.