Search - Richard [Classical] Wagner, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Berlin Symphony Orchestra :: Julia Varady ~ Wagner - Wesendonck-Lieder, Tristan und Isolde, Götterdämmerung

Best recording of the Wesendonk Lieder since Janet Baker's.

05/04/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Rumanian soprano Julia Varady has long been famed for her performances of Strauss, Mozart, and Verdi, but here, recorded late in her illustrious career--she retired from the stage last year--she shows herself to be the day's preeminent Wagnerian soprano. No thundering Nilsson or Flagstad she: Her voice is slender and gleaming in the silver-toned manner of Gundala Janowitz and she uses it with a Schwarzkopf-like intelligence that doesn't preclude deep emotional warmth and a heady spontaneity. The Wesendonk Lieder receive their finest recorded performance since Janet Baker's famous--and sadly unavailable--recording from the sixties. Varady pays scrupulous heed to musical values while articulating the text with an unemphatic attention to detail and an unexaggerated understanding of meaning worthy of her husband, the great lieder singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who here conducts the Desutches Symphony Orchestra in a glowing but clear-eyed and resolutely unsentimental accompaniment. As if this weren't enough, Varady, who would never sing Brunnhilde or Isolde on stage, gives thrilling accounts of both heroines final scenes--warm, womanly, cutting through the orchestral textures with rapturously beautiful, unstinting, and unstrained tone. Altogether a disk for every Wagnerian and every lover of the art of singing to treasure."

Magnificent performance

henryjohnson2534 | CA, USA | 12/29/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This recital disc was made in 1997. It is amazing how Varady's voice is so pure and beautiful. Simply amazing. Her account of the Immolation scene and Liebestod is among the finest ever made!! This disc was nominated for a Gramophone award, and it sure deserves its nomination. A magnificent achievement."

Perfectly realized

Khrysserx | Zaandam, Netherlands | 04/03/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I just got this recording, I'm ashamed to say that, although I was familiar with the operas, I hadn't heard the Wesendonck Lieder previously. But it's hard to imagine a more impassioned performance than this one. Julia Varady's voice is the superb instrument for Wagner's late Romantic style, and the conducting of the orchestra by Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau is top rate, despite what another reviewer has stated here. I heartily recommend this to anyone interested in some of the more obscure corners of Wagner's oeuvre."