COMPOSERS: Richard Wagner
LABELS: Sony Classical
ALBUM TITLE: Vogt: Wagner Arias
WORKS: Arias from Die Meistersinger, Lohengrin, Parsifal, Rienzi, Tristan und Isolde, Der fliegende Holländer, Götterdämmerung and Die Walküre
PERFORMER: Klaus Florian Vogt (tenor), Camilla Nylund (soprano); Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Jonathan Nott
CATALOGUE NO: 88765445152
Klaus Florian Vogt is one of the two leading contemporary German tenors in the Wagner repertoire. He has a lighter voice than the other, Jonas Kaufmann, and shows no trace of the baritonal quality that seems almost a prerequisite of the heroic repertoire. On this disc, he sings things he would never perform in the theatre, his obvious characteristic being an ethereal quality ideally suited to Lohengrin. It casts new light on Walther in Meistersinger and on Parsifal, though there his resources are stretched to the limit. Enterprisingly, Sony has recruited soprano Camilla Nylund to join him in extracts from Tristan and Die Walküre. Since the disc is quite short, though, the Walküre duet could easily have been ten minutes longer (Siegmund’s so-called ‘Spring Song’, part of the music not recorded, connects the two excerpts that are). There is a lot of fine singing here, expertly accompanied. Jonathan Nott seems to be a remarkable Wagner conductor. My main gripe is there are no notes on the excerpts, and, scandalously, the texts are not given, making the disc hopeless for a listener unfamiliar with the repertoire.
Michael Tanner
