Originally published on October 16
Recorded as recently as early July, this seven-movement orchestral compilation from Wagner’s final stage-work comes off well-enough and certainly becomes more engrossing as the forty-seven minutes journey on from a Prelude that lacks a certain luminosity and spiritualism – mystery – although that seemed less so on a second listen now with the enlightenment as to what will follow, which is a continuous sequence embracing Good Friday, the Preludes to the remaining two Acts if in reverse order, as well as a couple of Transformations and the Finale. Andrew Gourlay’s running one section to another works very well, played with sensitivity and grandeur by the LPO for the arranger (who also supplies the effective sampled bells), the listener sucked into the contemplation, the slow-burn drama simmering and also coming to the fore, with Andrew Keener providing expert production and engineer Phil Rowlands admirably allowing Henry Wood Hall to be its lucid if direct self if perhaps not Bayreuth enough for this particular score, in a reduction that Stokowski would have called a Synthesis, although he only gave Act III such treatment. Gourlay’s handiwork is on Orchid Classics ORC100207, released November 4.