Octo_Russ

Wagner - Overtures & Orchestral Music [Sinopoli-Staatskapelle Dresden] 

I am not someone who can listen my way through a 2 or 3 hour Opera, too much filler, too much talky bits, but when you strip an Opera Composer like Wagner away from his Operas, you end up with some exciting orchestral music, if only Wagner had decided to become a Symphonist like Mahler!, what you end up with is chunks of things, mainly his Overtures and Preludes, now i don't claim to listen to Wagner extensively, but the more i listen to him, the more i enjoy this 'vocal-less' stuff.

Giuseppe Sinopoli is Italian, he died of a heart attack roughly 11 years ago, while conducting Verdi's Aida, he is very much an Opera Conductor, he has a penchant for slow speeds and luxurious textures, he recorded this disc in 1995, the front cover photo [by Ludwig Schirmer] is of Sinopoli standing in the Staatskapelle Dresden Concert Hall, empty of people, you can feel the grandeur of the building, one thing it doesn't show is a good view of the ceiling, and the chandelier in the middle, quite impressive, there's a nice orange glow to the whole thing, and it gives off a sense of scale with the rows of seats, very orderly.

The two pieces i really enjoyed here were Das Liebesverbot Overture [The Ban On Love], and the Tannhauser Overture, the first is unknown to me, and it's good to listen to something new, what else has Wagner got secreted away in the middle of some Opera?, ultimately i find it's this new piece that takes first prize, it lasts nearly 9 minutes long here, it sounds like some trifle from Johann Strauss, or the fizz from an Offenbach Overture, it's great fun, it comes from an early Opera from Wagner, that was a resounding flop, it shows Wagner in a lighter jovial mood, he got more serious in his later works, so it's a shock to the system if you've never heard it before, from Wagner's pen it truly sounds comical and a send up joke at first, the thunderous Polka at the beginning is ingenious [0:05-0:38], and of course it keeps coming around again and again, after some more serious music tries to take over, it keeps inching its way back in, and goes full blast on its silly bubbly-ness, just listen to the frivolity of the high woodwind, especially the piccolo, it's like a marching band on helium! [3:32-3:47], the snaps and whipcracks are great too, near the end there's a trumpet fanfare chorus [6:32-6:40], Wagner throws all sorts of stuff into the mixing bowl, and it finishes with an exhilarating ending, getting faster and faster, i especially like the very end, three abrupt loud stops [8:38-8:47], something Beethoven would do after an Overture, it's a real clown of a piece.

Here's Daniel Harding conducting the Das Liebesverbot Overture on YouTube.