Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 1. Vorspiel
2. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 1. Westwärts schweift der Blick
3. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 1. Frisch weht der Wind
4. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 1. Weh, ach wehe! Dies zu dulden!
5. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 1. Den als Tantris unerkannt ich entlassen
6. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 1. Auf! Auf! Ihr Frauen!

Disc 2:

1. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 1. Herr Tristan trete nah!
2. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 1. War Morold dir so wert
3. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 1. Tristan!... Isolde!

Disc 3:

1. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. Vorspiel
2. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. Hörst du sie noch?
3. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. Isolde! Geliebte!... Tristan! Geliebter
4. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. O eitler Tagesknecht!
5. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. O sink herrieder, Nacht der Liebe
6. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. Einsam wachrend in der Nacht
7. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. Lausch, Geliebter!
8. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. So starben wir, um ungetrennt
9. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. Rette dich, Tristan!
10. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 2. O König, das kann ich dir nicht sagen

Disc 4:

1. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Vorspiel
2. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Kurwenal! He!
3. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Dünkt dich das? Ich weiß es anders
4. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Isolde kommt!
5. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Noch ist kein Schiff zu sehn!
6. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Bist du nun tot? Lebst du noch?
7. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. O Wonne! Freude!
8. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. O diese Sonne!
9. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Ha! Ich bin's, ich bin's
10. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Kurwenal! Hör Ein zweites Schiff
11. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Tot denn alles!
12. Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90: Act 3. Mild und liese wie er lächelt

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143538 in Music
• Released on: 1995-08-01
• Number of discs: 4

Customer Reviews

Best modern Tristan und Isolde.
Here we have the typical recording that have friends and enemies quite in the same number. I use to think this happens because of ears that are used to listen some way of playing Wagner and that never use to accept the new ways very easily.

If we speak seriously you can not hear, for example, any other recording with an orchestral playing and response so great and strong like the Berliner Philharmoniker under Barenboim's baton. Of course you can prefer another tempo, another dynamics, another way of understanding the sense of the work, but for me is quite an "objective" criteria that of the orchestral playing, from the technical point of view, a really outstanding miracle of perfection, from the very beginning to the end with the Isolda's death. The Vorspiel of the first act is one of the better music and performing I know, and in some way the key of many changes after his composition in the western music, specially in Germany and Austria, we have only to read about it in Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler, Schönberg, Berg, Webern... words. The way Barenboim conducts this Vorspiel is marvellous, full of mistery, grey premonitions and content passion, taking all the potential of the motive base of the work. The basses of the Berliner are amazing and the climax is so well done that you can finish breathless after the realization of the full score in this part, which ends in a marvellous pianissimo, very well recorded, like the full work, and with the distance voice of the sailor... ¡Outstanding!. And what can we say about the next dialogue between Brangane and Isolde? Perfection everywhere, in the singing and in the orchestral playing... Tension, perfect following the german musicality, vivid tempi...

We can talk about the full opera, vorspiel by vorspiel, act by act, singer by singer. Of course you can prefer other ways of playing this work (Furtwängler is a marvellous complement to have with this version), but in general lines I can say this one of the better opera performances in the last decades and one of the top performing under Barenboim's baton, one of the conductors who understand much more better the german sound and the germanic way of playing music. It's not for me a copy of Furtwängler's version, not at all; all of you who have both versions and listen them carefully know that it's a false idea.

Wonderful libretto and presentation in this Teldec release.

This recording deserves a longer review...
Summary:

The greatest recording of the greatest opera? Hyperbole, perhaps. But Tristan & Isolde is the finest Opera this side of Don Giovanni and Barenboim's superbly cast and engagingly played account is the best modern recording of the work by all means. His control, attention to detail and development is ever-impressive. More-so, this 1995 studio recording boasts Waltraud Meier, without peer as Kundry (Parsifal), who also excels in Isolde's role like few others. Jerusalem's Tristan is no Windgassen, but he sounds beautiful and holds more than his own against Meier. Mariana Lipovsek is a very distinctive, mature Brangäne while Matti Salminen rivals Kurt Moll's King Marke. Meier's thrilling Liebestod is as good as I've heard any-and her diction is superior to the note-swallowing, if electric Nilsson. Among the many Tristans I have and love, this is my favorite.

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Among my Tristan recordings (Furtwaengler, Boehm, Thielemann, Kleiber (Bayreuth), Barenboim) this is probably my over-all favorite. Is Jerusalem's Siegfried the best caught on record? Hardly, but he was in pretty good shape, still. Nor is Lipovsek, no longer young, the ideal Brangaene [I still appreciate her quite a bit in that role]. But the intelligibility of this T&I is stunning. It makes sense in every way, it features Waltraut Meier who is not only one of the best Kundry's (Parsifal) ever, but also one of the finest, if not *the* finest Isolde of our days. Her intelligence in singing is astounding.

Maybe her singing is not to everyones' taste - I know people who will take B.Nielssen over her anytime (admittedly no one is as chillingly sarcastic in Act 1), but I find Meier's Liebestod, for example, the most satisfying I know, slightly ahead of Bernstein's H.Behrens and Furtwaengler's Flagstad (despite patched notes, courtesy Schwarzkopf). Her pronounciation and diction is far better than Nielssen (sure - that isn't everything, but if you like to read along or speak German, it is nice) who has a tendency to swallow whole syllables, at least in Boehm's recording.

At the very least - even after Thieleman's new release on DG - this is the best modern (digitally recorded) Tristan available. The playing and conducting is, for all I care, impeccable. Barenboim is in a league where only Sawallisch and Thielemann have operated in Wagner over the last 20 years. There is still much to be said about other stalwarts... but be assured: If you only have this Tristan in your collection, you aren't bad off at all!

Poetry and passion
We are blessed with so many recordings of this opera (nearly two dozen, counting out-of-print? I've lost count). There will never be a consensus which is the best. Ultimately it will come down to your personal taste, and preference for the tenor, or the soprano, or the sound. Why choose by conductor? He doesn't sing a note. I have attended many opera performances that were ruined by a mediocre or painfully bad tenor or soprano, but never by a conductor. The studio engineers are responsible for orchestral balance on a recording.

I'm listening to this Barenboim version as I write. My skin tingles as I hear Siegfried Jerusalem's ringing, stentorian passages, and my eyes and face are soaked during his lyrical phrases. While he sings, I wonder how anybody could prefer another tenor. He was just as good on stage - I heard him in his prime at the Bavarian State Opera n the late 70s. Nobody wanted to leave the house after the final curtain.

Waltraud Meier as Isolde is almost in the same league, though flawed in a few spots with pinched top notes. But many passages are heartrendingly beautiful. Her Liebestod is a triumph.

That being said, you have to hear Flagstad or Traubel and Lauritz Melchior at least once to know the tradition, and they're wonderful. The dark voice of Melchior is the standard by which other heldentenors are measured still, but it's only transmitted in Thirties or Forties recorded sound. Windgassen and Nilsson are a classic pair on nearly the same plane, with better sonics. The tenors of Domingo and Jerusalem are fairly bright-sounding in comparison - not worse, or inappropriate, just different. Placido is my favorite tenor in general; he is stellar in almost any repertory, and amazingly good in this most German of operas, but in spots a little too Latin in his phrasing, if you know German and German opera. Jon Vickers' voice is more similar to Melchior's than are most other heldentenors', and you can't go wrong with the Vickers-Dernesch version of Tristan. Vickers is a wonderful interpreter, though his pipes are not so golden as those of Jerusalem, who like Domingo can start the tears pouring both with the beauty of his voice and his sensitive phrasing.

If I had to choose only one Tristan to take to a desert isle, it would probably come down to Vickers and Jerusalem. I think I'd take one openly and conceal the other in my baggage.