Search - Anton Bruckner, Franz [Vienna] Schubert, Gunter / Seifert, Wolfgang Wand :: The Last Recording - The Last Interview

The world is missing a great conductor

jgri | New York, NY, USA | 04/29/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Well - Günter Wand simply is missing in the musical world of today, and he surely cannot be replaced. Having lived in Hamburg (or close by) in the last years I had the great pleassure to listen to almost all concerts of this master live (i.e. sitting in the concert hall), including the one recorded here. For the "big B's" - Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner - you cannot find better recordings than Wand's. The NDR SO with Wand grows probably to one of the world's best orchestras. The performances were allways fascinating masterpieces. Wand is the master of the big picture, the context within the whole piece and the movements themselfs - and the orchestra followed him, sometimes even only on a little movement with his forefinger...
Listening to his recordings - and particularly to this one - I still feel the loss to myself personally due to the death of this big old man, which speeks for the recording itself. Technically the recording is excellent, since it is usually the same bunch of NDR techincians who recorded the Wand performances.
Taken together you cannot go better than with this recording (this is true for all of his recordings by the way...)."