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CELIBIDACHE / Münchner Philharmoniker - Wagner: Orchestral Music
Richard Wagner, Sergiu Celibidache, Münchner Philharmoniker
CELIBIDACHE / Münchner Philharmoniker - Wagner: Orchestral Music
Genre: Classical
 
  •  Track Listings (9) - Disc #1

When it comes to Sergiu Celibidache and Wagner, it's time to slow down the metronome, tear down the theater, and break out the embalming fluid. To hear such inspired music rendered in a clinical, abstract, and utterly joyl...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Richard Wagner, Sergiu Celibidache, Münchner Philharmoniker
Title: CELIBIDACHE / Münchner Philharmoniker - Wagner: Orchestral Music
Members Wishing: 1
Total Copies: 0
Label: EMI Classics
Release Date: 2/17/1998
Album Type: Import
Genre: Classical
Styles: Opera & Classical Vocal, Forms & Genres, Symphonies
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 724355652423

Synopsis

Amazon.com
When it comes to Sergiu Celibidache and Wagner, it's time to slow down the metronome, tear down the theater, and break out the embalming fluid. To hear such inspired music rendered in a clinical, abstract, and utterly joyless fashion is enough to cry a thousand uncles, yet you can't dispute the obvious podium mastery behind the wrong-headedness. A puzzlement! --Jed Distler
 

CD Reviews

An experiment in sound and spirituality
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 07/08/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Amazon reviewer more or less ridicules Celibidache's famously slow tempos, and many listeners would get very, very restless during some of these performances. But Celibidache's posthumous recordings on EMI and DG became bestsellers in Britain, and they should be taken seriously. The eccentric Romanian conductor, who never made a comemrcial recording in the stereo era, had a theory about how sound should be heard in a concert hall, having to do with reverberation time, and he slowed the tempos down drastically to impart a new, more spiritual experience of the music.



Of course, we don't have the benefit of being in a hall under the conductor's spell. Even so, these Wagner readings evoke new feelings. The 12-min. Meistersinger Prelude isn't glacial--it's slowed down enough to make a statement. Inner tension and vitality remain, and there's a certain golden glory to hearing Wagner's chords resound this way. The sonics, presumably from FM radio braodxasts, are excellent.



The program continues with a 23-min. Siegfried Idyll that is again quite slow but not glacial, changing the mood to one of deep reflection, more like a Bruckner slow movement than a serenade. If you are going to be converted to Celi's methods, probably the clincher will be Siegfried's Funeral March, taken with real mystery and depth of sorrow. The program ends with the Tannhauser Over. and considerable applause, which follows every item, by the way.



In all, a less-than-extreme introduction to Celibidache's controversial art."