Suggest Some Wagner Instrumental Overture or Prelude Compilations

[mikeweil]

Oh, well ... they just do not want to hear it any other way, and need the exaggerations of modern orchestral sound to get off. Probably the same people who do not want to hear about Wagner's extreme anti-semitism. I could care less about amateurs' reviews on amazon ...

[Teasing the Korean]

I found Tennstedt recordings "soft" and dumped them.

Not the most exciting I've heard, but at these prices, worth a listen.

[T.D.]

Maybe I shouldn't have spoken so soon on Tennstedt. The Tennstedt disc I own is an old singleton with only non-"Ring" overtures. Maybe the "soft" approach works better for "Lohengrin" and "Rienzi" overtures...Don't have a "Ring" excerpts CD; the full cycle I kept is Solti, who probably qualifies as "anti-soft".

Edited April 22, 2013 by T.D.

[Bigshot]

Solti is definitely anti-soft. I'd call him strident at times.

I like my Wagner to be varied in emotion. I really like Stokowski's symphonic synthesis transcriptions. Bambert's rerecording of these is pretty good.

[Peter Friedman]

I have a cd of George Szell and The Cleveland Orchestra playing great orchestral highlights from the Ring series.

Though I am no Wagner buff, I like this disc very much.