Wagner's Vision - Bayreuth Heritage on Spotify

"This 50-CD set is released to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner, and is an outstanding sound document of the history of the Bayreuth Festival during the first half of the 20th century. The collection includes music from all operas authorised by Wagner for performance in Bayreuth. To complement the edition, scenes and solo titles out of the decades of the festival direction of Cosima, Siegfried and Winifred Wagner are included. They go back to the festival summer of 1904 and communicate impressions from important and famous performances until 1943.

Recordings from New Bayreuth of the Wagner grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang lead to the newest era of the festival. All performances on the 50 CDs are original recordings from Bayreuth and are directed by Siegfried Wagner, Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Victor de Sabata, Karl Muck, Herbert von Karajan, Clemens Krauss, Joseph Keilberth, Hans Knappertsbusch, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Lorin Maazel and André Cluytens – a role call of some of the 20th century’s greatest conductors." - introduction from The Wagnerian

Get this collection in one Spotify playlist here: Wagner's Vision - Bayreuth Heritage (311 tracks, total time: 34 hours). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. All available titles listed here are on Spotify. More reviews and discussions. For Complete Wagner, see my previous playlist.

Richard Wagner: Complete Chronological Catalogue

Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. Indeed, though Wagner occasionally produced successful music written on a relatively modest scale, opera -- the bigger, the better -- was clearly his milieu, and his aesthetic is perhaps the most grandiose that Western music has ever known. - AllMusic


Works in this playlist (operas are in bold):

• WWV 15: Seven Compositions on Goethe's Faust
• WWV 21: Sonata in B flat Major, Op. 1
• WWV 22: Fantasia in F-sharp minor
• WWV 23B: Polonaise for piano, four hands
• WWV 24A: König Enzio, overture for orchestra
• WWV 26: Grand Sonata in A major
• WWV 27: Concert Overture No. 2 in C major
• WWV 29: Symphony in C major
• WWV 32: Die Feen
• WWV 35: Symphony in E major
• WWV 37: Columbus Overture
• WWV 38: Das Liebesverbot
• WWV 39: Polonia. Overture in C major
• WWV 42: Rule Britannia. Overture in D major
• WWV 49: Rienzi
• WWV 50: Der Tannenbaum
• WWV 53: Dors mon enfant
• WWV 54: Extase
• WWV 55: Attente
• WWV 57: Mignonne
• WWV 58: Tout n'est qu'images fugitives
• WWV 59: Eine Faust-Ouvertüre
• WWV 60: Les deux grenadiers
• WWV 61: Adieux de Marie Stuart
• WWV 62: Arrangements from Donizetti's opera La favorite
• WWV 63: Der fliegende Holländer
• WWV 64: Albumblatt für Ernst Benedikt Kietz 
• WWV 68B: Festgesang for men's chorus (& brass)
• WWV 69: Das Liebesmahl der Apostel
• WWV 70: Tannhäuser
• WWV 72: An Webers Grabe, for male chorus
• WWV 73: Trauermusik, for band (based on Weber's Euryanthe)
  
• WWV 75: Lohengrin
• WWV 84: Polka
• WWV 85: Eine Sonate für das Album von Frau MW
• WWV 86A: Das Rheingold
• WWV 86B: Die Walküre
• WWV 86C: Siegfried
• WWV 86D: Götterdämmerung
• WWV 87: Konzertschluß to the Overture to Iphigenie in Aulis
• WWV 88: Züricher Vielliebchen-Walzer
• WWV 90: Tristan und Isolde
• WWV 91: Wesendonck Lieder 
• WWV 94: Albumblatt, In the album of Fürstin M 
• WWV 95: Ankunft bei den schwarzen Schwänen
• WWV 96: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
• WWV 97: Huldigungsmarsch
• WWV 103: Siegfried Idyll
• WWV 104: Kaiser march
• WWV 105: Scherzlied für Louis Kraft, (Kraft-Lied)
• WWV 108: Albumblatt für Frau Betty Schott
• WWV 110: American Centennial March
• WWV 111: Parsifal
• Geburtsangrüß an Cosima, (no catalog number)

(Only one track from WWV 62 the Donizetti arrangements is included)

All operas are available on Spotify UK and USA in their entirety, except for Die Feen (no recording on Spotify USA). For the Ring cycle, I used four recordings for the four parts: three of them are from Bohm, Boulez and Barenboim's complete recording of the cycle, and for Die Walküre I used Furtwangler's only studio recording of the Ring.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Richard Wagner: Complete Chronological Catalogue (669 tracks, total time: 2 days) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. Also check out these Wagner audiobooks on Spotify: Opera Explained: The Flying Dutchman from Naxos Educational, and Deryke Cooke's introduction (link 1, 2)  to the Ring.

Update: added the Paris version of Tannhäuser (partially available on Spotify USA).

Operas and Songs Without Words

"Fruitless effort to separate the two. Words and Music are fused into one … bound in a new synthesis. Secret of the hour… one art redeemed by the other!" - Countess Madeleine's soliloquy at the end of Richard Strauss' final opera Capriccio.

That being said, the language barrier is still keeping many classical music fans, including me, from fully appreciating the art of opera. Attending opera performances, watching operas in DVD/Blue-ray with subtitles, or at least listening to recordings with a libretto at hand seem to be required for understand the medium, so we cannot listen to operas while reading or rearranging furniture. Before I can find more time to dig into operas, I listen to operas without words occasionally, simply because there are some of the best orchestral music ever written among them.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Opera Without Words (311 tracks, total time: 22 hours) Highlights including Tannhäuser Without Words - A symphonic synthesis by Lorin Maazel, String Quartet version of Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Arturo Toscanini's rehearsal of Die Walküre without singers. It may work better in Album view.

I also included some arrangements of famous lieder cycles. The difference with Liszt's piano transcriptions is here an instrument, other than the piano, sings the vocal part. Try this playlist if you fancy hearing a cello singing Schubert's Winterreise or a viola singing Schumann's Dichterliebe.