Credits:

Joseph Moog

Description:

The Bayreuth Festival Theater was built for the purpose of performing only Wagner's works. However, only Beethoven's Ninth was considered a "special work," as Wagner himself conducted it at the opening concert, and it was performed occasionally during the festival's milestone years. After a hiatus due to the war, Furtwängler conducted the opening concert in 1951, which is still talked about today as a legendary concert. Furtwängler also performed the Ninth in 1954, which has already been released on the Orfeo label. In 1963, the 150th anniversary of Wagner's birth and the 80th anniversary of his death, the 68-year-old Karl Böhm, who had appeared at the Bayreuth Festival the year before, conducted the Ninth. He gave a masterful performance that marked the beginning of the "new Bayreuth era" in both name and reality. The sound created by the four wonderful soloists and the 217-member choir in the final movement is accompanied by a power that surpasses the earlier Furtwängler disc. Naxos Japan