# Furtwänglar: Tristan and Isolde



## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

I am re-visiting this opera after some time.

I have to say that the monaural sound quality of this ancient 1952 recording is just plain awful - IMO to the point where the appreciation of the quality of the performance is seriously compromised. I realize this is hailed as one of the great interpretations, but I have a very hard time listening to it. It may be that the poor quality of the recording is more apparent through headphones - but to my ears it is like standing in the foyer of the opera house and listening to the performance through closed doors.

It seems recording tecnology went through a revolution somewhere between 1952 and 1955. I have an excellent 1955 recording of the Marriage of Figaro in very acceptable stereo - yet only three years ealier - this - and by a very competent producer, too.

For the same reason I find much of Callas' out put "difficult". Such a pity she did not record in the studio just a few years later when stereo had become the norm.

(BTW: I find Karajan's 1972 recording of T. & I. wonderful - both sound and performance are wonderful. With Solti the vocalists are too far back in the mix).


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

That's very surprising. Others and i have said that it is very good mono. i sometimes forget that it is mono.


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## NLAdriaan (Feb 6, 2019)

Likely on headphones you will have relative worse sound, on speaker it sounds OK to me. You also might try Kleiber, his DG studio recording is especially good on headphones, Margaret Price is great for close listening and it is digitally recorded.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

If this is the same EMI recording that you have, I find the mono sound more than acceptable and I'm listening through an audiophile set of headphones. It sounds open and natural to me. The stereo era might not have began in 1952, but I still wouldn't consider it the dark ages of poor recorded sound. I would compare the sound of your recording to this one because maybe there's a problem somewhere:






I find this performance magical and irresistible - a classic that's hard to resist once it starts because of how it touches the emotions. Wagner was capable of writing with such great sensuality and passion. There's something epic in this love story that's bigger than anything else I've heard (not that there haven't been other great love stories in opera).


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I've found the same thing with regards to the sound on that recording (the same goes for Furty's studio Walkure). Maybe EMI's early mono techniques compromise Wagner's large orchestral palette too much. I don't have a problem with other EMI mono sets from the same era and the Callas recordings seem much better produced to my ears, so I don't agree with you there.

I'm also not a fan of Flagstad and I find Suthaus OK, but this recording hasn't ever quite done it for me. (I love the opera, though.) That said, this is a recording that I would like to listen to again once I have the time as it is such a classic.

My go to Tristan is the live Karajan from 52 with even _worse_ sound! However, I can put up with that due to the radiance of the performance from all concerned.

N.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Best sound for this is Pristine XR, try this long HD sound sample, voices are finely detailed......

https://www.pristineclassical.com/products/paco067?_pos=14&_sid=5d9b709a1&_ss=r










Fanfare Mag review:



> The real question for collectors is whether this Pristine transfer is significantly superior to the earlier ones. I had praise for both EMI's and Naxos's versions, giving a very slight edge to the Naxos transfer by Mark Obert-Thorn. I was not expecting a meaningful difference in Andrew Rose's effort for Pristine, but in fact it is enough of an improvement to warrant its purchase by any serious collector. In addition to listening to it all the way through, I did a number of spot A-B comparisons to the EMI and Naxos. It seems to me that Rose has managed to come up with a sound picture that is fuller at both the upper and lower extremes of frequency, without ever turning the sound harsh. It is the bass that is particularly impressive here-never boomy, but satisfyingly solid with an impact missing until now. The orchestral colors are richer, the voices bloom more, and the whole is more satisfying than it has ever been. I heard the ambient stereo version, but assume the monaural version that Pristine also issues is of equal quality.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

DarkAngel said:


> Best sound for this is Pristine XR, try this long HD sound sample, voices are finely detailed......
> 
> https://www.pristineclassical.com/products/paco067?_pos=14&_sid=5d9b709a1&_ss=r
> 
> ...


The nine-minute example excerpt sounds very good and the sound floor seems noticeably quieter and very agreeable. Evidently, the editor also did some pitch correction that hadn't been done in 60 years. Nevertheless, I think the EMI recording is still very good and quite affordable if one doesn't mind used copies.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

KRoad said:


> (BTW: I find Karajan's 1972 recording of T. & I. wonderful - both sound and performance are wonderful. With Solti the vocalists are too far back in the mix).


You might want to try the Bohm. It's my favorite version (notwithstanding that I have the Pristine version for Furt and I think the sound quality on the EMI is fine anyways).

Lately, it's my favorite version by such a big margin that I frequently find myself starting to listen to the Karajan, or the Furt, or the Bernstein, or the Kleiber, or whatever, and within an hour or two, I find myself irresistibly drawn to listening to the Bohm instead. Nilsson is to me completely unmatched as Isolde; Bohm's urgent and theatrical approach is intensely gripping. It was a stage recording (although recorded one act at a time and in front of a small select invited audience) so it's not quite as luscious as a studio recording, but it's in good stereo sound.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I am surprised to hear someone say the sound is awful. I wouldn't;t say it is modern by any means but it is adequate mono. The problem lies more in the fact that by this stage Flagstad was rather elderly and matronly and sounds uncommonly like Tristan's mother. Pity the voice couldn't have been well recorded about 20 years before. Suthaus apparently looked like PG Woodhouse' Jeeves and has been remarked he sounds a bit like him too! Furtwangler of course was a master Wagnerian but for the real thing go to Karajan 1952 in worse sound but electrifying live performance..


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> The problem lies more in the fact that by this stage Flagstad was rather elderly and matronly and sounds uncommonly like Tristan's mother. Pity the voice couldn't have been well recorded about 20 years before.


20 years before? That would have been 1932, three years before America even knew of her existence! Flagstad made her Met debut at the age of forty and can be heard in prime vocal estate in live recordings through the 1930s, with the last such recording from Teatro Colon in 1948. In 1952 Flagstad was 57 years old and all but her top few notes were still free and luxuriant, filling out both the passionate and the intimate phrases of Wagner's larger-than-life character as few others can. "Matronly" is very much in the ear of the beholder.

I never cared whether the Furtwangler _Tristan_ sounded good or not. It has unique musical values.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

As a Wagnerian I can say I straight-up don't care for Flagstad. This opera is about erotic passion which is not Flagstad. Flagstad is not _sexy!
_
This is my favorite CD:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> As a Wagnerian I can say I straight-up don't care for Flagstad. This opera is about erotic passion which is not Flagstad. Flagstad is not _sexy!
> _
> This is my favorite CD:


Well, Jerusalem and Meier don't sound "sexy" to me either. But since when does sexual passion require its participants to be sexy? In any case, _Tristan_ is about more than sex.

The suggestion that the desperate need of Tristan and Isolde to find a place of refuge in a cold world is just a hormonally-induced infatuation puts the opera in roughly the same category as _La Boheme._ Rodolfo will get over Mimi in about a month, or whenever the next pretty little number knocks on his freezing garret door and offers him a warm night under the sheets. Tristan, reviewing the pain of his life, simply cannot go on living in the "day" world in which coldness resides not in snowy nights and unpaid bills but in the soul of a society ruled by rigid rank and custom, beneath the oppressiveness of which men and women are not free to be themselves, or even to discover who they are.

_La Boheme_ is a soap opera. _Tristan und Isolde_ is a tragedy, and it doesn't attain that stature by being a tale of sexual frustration.

Barenboim's conducting of that duet, btw, isn't a patch on Furtwangler's.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Well, Jerusalem and Meier don't sound "sexy" to me either. But since when does sexual passion require its participants to be sexy? In any case, _Tristan_ is about more than sex.
> 
> The suggestion that the desperate need of Tristan and Isolde to find a place of refuge in a cold world is just a hormonally-induced infatuation puts the opera in roughly the same category as _La Boheme._ Rodolfo will get over Mimi in about a month, or whenever the next pretty little number knocks on his freezing garret door and offers him a warm night under the sheets. Tristan, reviewing the pain of his life, simply cannot go on living in the "day" world in which coldness resides not in snowy nights and unpaid bills but in the soul of a society ruled by rigid rank and custom, beneath the oppressiveness of which men and women are not free to be themselves, or even to discover who they are.
> 
> ...


Hm, not sure why Boheme needs to take a stray bullet in this argument.

I'll sort of endorse Couchie's point in a different way--I'm not sure that I would consider any of the extant Isoldes to be remotely sexy, but I do think they need to be _passionate_, and be capable of portraying this character full of extreme emotions--the anger and betrayal and repressed love in Act 1, the ecstatic wonder of Act 2 and the devastation and transfiguration of Act 3. And as beautifully as Flagstad sings the role, the most apt word to describe her performance is "marmoreal".

Ultimately for me, I find her performance pretty dissatisfying because she feels almost to me to be an orator orating the role instead of an actor inhabiting her role. I often feel that way about both her and Melchior, actually, which is why as much as I appreciate their beautiful vocalizing, I often find lesser singers but more dramatic performers more satisfying.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

howlingfantods said:


> Hm, not sure why Boheme needs to take a stray bullet in this argument.
> 
> I'll sort of endorse Couchie's point in a different way--I'm not sure that I would consider any of the extant Isoldes to be remotely sexy, but I do think they need to be _passionate_, and be capable of portraying this character full of extreme emotions--the anger and betrayal and repressed love in Act 1, the ecstatic wonder of Act 2 and the devastation and transfiguration of Act 3. And as beautifully as Flagstad sings the role, the most apt word to describe her performance is "marmoreal".
> 
> Ultimately for me, I find her performance pretty dissatisfying because she feels almost to me to be an orator orating the role instead of an actor inhabiting her role. I often feel that way about both her and Melchior, actually, which is why as much as I appreciate their beautiful vocalizing, I often find lesser singers but more dramatic performers more satisfying.


What bullet? Did I say that anything is wrong with _La Boheme?_ Soap opera doesn't come any better.

I understand your reservations about Flagstad. She had a placid temperament; Frida Leider before her and Birgit Nilsson after her were more intense and volatile (and then there were Modl and Varnay, for those who can tolerate them). Still, Flagstad was vocal royalty, and heard live, as on the night of Jan. 2, 1937, she was a princess to die for - passionate, tender and sensual. No one has poured sheer legato beauty into "Er sah mir in die Auge..." as she did. More than any other soprano, she made Wagner's vocal lines beautiful.

I love Nilsson's Isolde under Bohm in '66, especially in the first act, but when I first heard her in the opening scene of Act II I was disappointed, feeling that she and Bohm failed to capture the sheer Romantic poetry of the music the way Flagstad and Furtwangler did. For me both recordings are essential for bringing out different facets of a work that no one one performance can ever do full justice.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

howlingfantods said:


> Ultimately for me, I find her performance pretty dissatisfying because she feels almost to me to be an orator orating the role instead of an actor inhabiting her role. I often feel that way about both her and Melchior, actually, which is why as much as I appreciate their beautiful vocalizing, I often find lesser singers but more dramatic performers more satisfying.


Brings to mind a passage from J.B. Steane's _The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record_. As opposed to "the imaginative care for words" and "the vivid and intimate singing of Wagner" post-WWII, "in the inter-war years, greatness among the Wagnerians lay principally in another direction. It lay essentially in the application of sound vocal method to music which so often had tempted singers to a non-lyrical, explosive or merely wooden style. The immense value of the records of Leider, Flagstad, Melchior, and Schorr is that they are all _sung_: smoothness, steadiness, sonority, control, they are all present as probably in no generation of Wagnerian singers before or since. These singers were far from giving shallow interpretations, but the distinctive merit of their work as examples to later times (as well as being an unfailing source of pleasure in themselves) lies essentially in the sheer beauty of sound."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Brings to mind a passage from J.B. Steane's _The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record_. As opposed to "the imaginative care for words" and "the vivid and intimate singing of Wagner" post-WWII, "in the inter-war years, greatness among the Wagnerians lay principally in another direction. It lay essentially in the application of sound vocal method to music which so often had tempted singers to a non-lyrical, explosive or merely wooden style. The immense value of the records of Leider, Flagstad, Melchior, and Schorr is that they are all _sung_: smoothness, steadiness, sonority, control, they are all present as probably in no generation of Wagnerian singers before or since. These singers were far from giving shallow interpretations, but the distinctive merit of their work as examples to later times (as well as being an unfailing source of pleasure in themselves) lies essentially in the sheer beauty of sound."


Steane is talking about the "Italian style" of singing, a concept that meant something back when Italy was supplying the world with singers schooled in _bel canto._ I love the story told by Jess Thomas about how, in the year of his Bayreuth debut as Parsifal, he was sitting at a cafe table when an elderly woman approached him, introduced herself as Frida Leider, and praised him for singing Wagner's music in the style in which it should be sung, the "Italian style."


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> Brings to mind a passage from J.B. Steane's _The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record_. As opposed to "the imaginative care for words" and "the vivid and intimate singing of Wagner" post-WWII, "in the inter-war years, greatness among the Wagnerians lay principally in another direction. It lay essentially in the application of sound vocal method to music which so often had tempted singers to a non-lyrical, explosive or merely wooden style. The immense value of the records of Leider, Flagstad, Melchior, and Schorr is that they are all _sung_: smoothness, steadiness, sonority, control, they are all present as probably in no generation of Wagnerian singers before or since. These singers were far from giving shallow interpretations, but the distinctive merit of their work as examples to later times (as well as being an unfailing source of pleasure in themselves) lies essentially in the sheer beauty of sound."


This I think was typical of Steane's priorities in that he valued smoothness and beauty of singing above everything else. Nothing wrong with that - it's a point of view. One of the reasons he found Karajan's Tristan difficult to live with was Vickers' hyper-dramatic Tristan which in many ways was the opposite of the values he espoused. Richard Osborn called it 'slippered old age' but it is a matter of priorities. To me I prefer Isolde to sound like a princess which is why I prefer Denersch (for Karajan) or Price (for Kleiber) as they actually sound as if you could fall in love with them. Nilsson has sheer voice, a thing to wonder at, but could we love her, even with the aid of a potion? I think she would send even the bravest warrior running for his life! :lol:


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## Byron (Mar 11, 2017)

Like any recording one can quibble about this aspect or that, but it features tremendous singing and spellbinding conducting from perhaps the greatest Wagnerian of the 20th century. Sure the sound is a little mushy, but it's absolutely compelling. This was the first recording of the opera I heard and it's still my favorite, though there are several others that are extraordinary as well.


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## 89Koechel (Nov 25, 2017)

Very fine quote, amfortas; certainly, we can be sure that Frida Leider, Lehmann, Flagstad or even the MEN (Melchior, Schorr … and let's not forget Alexander Kipnis, and many others) weren't worried about whether they were "sexy". They simply gave the best vocal resources, in a true, non-hysterical/(or overly-emotional) way, molding their vocal instruments and passions into an interweaving of the true intent of Wagner … WITH some of the better orchestral accompaniments of the time (yes, even in the pre-stereo age) … into something that's endured for many decades.


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## 89Koechel (Nov 25, 2017)

Also, thanks to DarkAngel & Lark, for noticing what Andrew Rose - Pristine Classical - has done with the "venerable" recording of Flagstad, Blanche Thebom & Furtwangler. Mr. Rose has done even MORE, with the great recordings of the Borlange (Sweden) fellow - Jussi Bjorling. … Well, I've been listening to the EMI CD set (Furtwangler) and I find, virtually-nothing to complain about … although I've never found the voice of Josef Greindl (King Mark) as anything other than "woolly", and fairly-inadequate, in anything Wagnerian.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> Well, Jerusalem and Meier don't sound "sexy" to me either. But since when does sexual passion require its participants to be sexy? In any case, _Tristan_ is about more than sex.
> 
> The suggestion that the desperate need of Tristan and Isolde to find a place of refuge in a cold world is just a hormonally-induced infatuation puts the opera in roughly the same category as _La Boheme._ Rodolfo will get over Mimi in about a month, or whenever the next pretty little number knocks on his freezing garret door and offers him a warm night under the sheets. Tristan, reviewing the pain of his life, simply cannot go on living in the "day" world in which coldness resides not in snowy nights and unpaid bills but in the soul of a society ruled by rigid rank and custom, beneath the oppressiveness of which men and women are not free to be themselves, or even to discover who they are.
> 
> ...


I think "matronly" and "marmoreal" used by others perfectly describe Flagstad's performance.

Act I (Isolde) and Act III (Tristan) require the singers to "get their hands dirty". A performance that comes off as sounding effortless (as in Flagstand and Melichior's famed power but "leaving some in the tank for reserve") actually does the source material a disservice. Singers who take risks and go all-out like Meier and Lorenz capture the intensity of what this "unperformable" opera is all about.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> I think "matronly" and "marmoreal" used by others perfectly describe Flagstad's performance.
> 
> Act I (Isolde) and Act III (Tristan) require the singers to "get their hands dirty". A performance that comes off as sounding effortless (as in Flagstand and Melichior's famed power but "leaving some in the tank for reserve") actually does the source material a disservice. Singers who take risks and go all-out like Meier and Lorenz capture the intensity of what this "unperformable" opera is all about.


You make a valid point. It may come down to how much vocal impurity we can tolerate. As a singer and a lover of great singing, I get a sympathetic sore throat listening to Lorenz, Modl and any number of others going "all out." There's a lot of music in _Tristan _which is actually beautiful when beautifully sung but which too often fails to sound that way, and that too is part of what the opera is all about.

I was spoiled by what Flagstad and Furtwangler make of the opening scene of Act 2: the nocturnal murmurings of the breeze, the purling brook, the distant horncalls, Isolde's rhapsodizing about "Frau Minne" - and then the whole Liebesnacht, the lovers lost to the world on the flowery bank, Brangaene's disebodied voice floating into the night over Furtwangler's incomparable orchestral enchantment. No other performance I've heard captures so fully the deep beauty and timelessness of this music. Wagner told Mathilde Wesendonck, while he was composing _Tristan_, that he was thinking of Bellini. It's hard to make sense of that when the singers are audibly struggling to maintain the musical line. I'd like to have heard Leider and Melchior in the '30s. We do have this to suggest what they could do:


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

Couchie said:


> Act I (Isolde) and Act III (Tristan) require the singers to "get their hands dirty". A performance that comes off as sounding effortless (as in Flagstand and Melichior's famed power but "leaving some in the tank for reserve") actually does the source material a disservice. Singers who take risks and go all-out like Meier and Lorenz capture the intensity of what this "unperformable" opera is all about.


While I agree that the music needs the performer to inject passion and dramatic intent, there is no substitute for the ability to sing what Wagner wrote with complete vocal command. And while I sometimes find Flagstad too placid for my taste, I hear no lack of passion in Melchior's Tristan Act 3. I prefer Tristans who don't sound as though they're about to cough up a lung.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

is it me or does Furtwangler conducting style overshadow the music?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> is it me or does Furtwangler conducting style overshadow the music?


It's you. .................


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## Bill H. (Dec 23, 2010)

DavidA said:


> I am surprised to hear someone say the sound is awful. I wouldn't;t say it is modern by any means but it is adequate mono. The problem lies more in the fact that by this stage Flagstad was rather elderly and matronly and sounds uncommonly like Tristan's mother. Pity the voice couldn't have been well recorded about 20 years before. Suthaus apparently looked like PG Woodhouse' Jeeves and has been remarked he sounds a bit like him too! Furtwangler of course was a master Wagnerian but for the real thing go to Karajan 1952 in worse sound but electrifying live performance..


For anybody's info, I did do a remix of the '52 Bayreuth Karajan some years ago, which I haven't revisited since--but it did strike me sound-wise as coming from a better source than some of the commercial releases that were prevalent at the time (there was a story that Martha Mödl had her own archival copy of the radio tapes that was better quality than the airchecks that were commonly being used). Anyone can download the mp3s from the link, which has the option of the recording split into 3 CD length folders with tracks, or as 3 Act-long files. It comes across to me as a little bass-hefty like many other versions, but if it sounds better than the one you have now, then please enjoy.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByTWd_3f2RpSOS0zN01acjhTS0U


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

Bill H. said:


> For anybody's info, I did do a remix of the '52 Bayreuth Karajan some years ago, which I haven't revisited since--but it did strike me sound-wise as coming from a better source than some of the commercial releases that were prevalent at the time (there was a story that Martha Mödl had her own archival copy of the radio tapes that was better quality than the airchecks that were commonly being used). Anyone can download the mp3s from the link, which has the option of the recording split into 3 CD length folders with tracks, or as 3 Act-long files. It comes across to me as a little bass-hefty like many other versions, but if it sounds better than the one you have now, then please enjoy.
> 
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByTWd_3f2RpSOS0zN01acjhTS0U


But what did you use as your source? I've heard several different issues of this over the years - Cetra LP's, CD's on Opera d'Oro and Myto - and by far the best sound is the "official" issue on Orfeo, which sounds just fine. If you remixed any of the other issues, you were working with vastly inferior source material.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Bill H. said:


> For anybody's info, I did do a remix of the '52 Bayreuth Karajan some years ago, which I haven't revisited since--but it did strike me sound-wise as coming from a better source than some of the commercial releases that were prevalent at the time (there was a story that Martha Mödl had her own archival copy of the radio tapes that was better quality than the airchecks that were commonly being used). Anyone can download the mp3s from the link, which has the option of the recording split into 3 CD length folders with tracks, or as 3 Act-long files. It comes across to me as a little bass-hefty like many other versions, but if it sounds better than the one you have now, then please enjoy.
> 
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByTWd_3f2RpSOS0zN01acjhTS0U


Thanks again BillH.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

KRoad said:


> (BTW: I find Karajan's 1972 recording of T. & I. wonderful - both sound and performance are wonderful.).


It is a good one, but I seem to recall some odd shifts of perspective in places, as if different takes, with the singers standing in different positions, have been spliced together.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> It is a good one, but I seem to recall some odd shifts of perspective in places, as if different takes, with the singers standing in different positions, have been spliced together.


Karajan recorded the thing in different takes like a huge tapestry. He could be a menace in the recording studio. However, apparently the duet was put together in one take.


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## Bill H. (Dec 23, 2010)

wkasimer said:


> But what did you use as your source? I've heard several different issues of this over the years - Cetra LP's, CD's on Opera d'Oro and Myto - and by far the best sound is the "official" issue on Orfeo, which sounds just fine. If you remixed any of the other issues, you were working with vastly inferior source material.


You know, it's been so long I don't even recall the source, other than it was not a commercial CD, it was a digital source file. I would think the Orfeo would be the best of all of those CDs out there, but I haven't seen it in print lately. If it's still in release, then by all means I would agree that's the one to get.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Flagstad's voice is still so extraordinarily beautiful and I don't need her to sound young to blow me away vocally. Her Isolde's Curse is monumental and magnificent. It was still at this point in her career one of the most extraordinary voices ever recorded and she gave a sensitive reading of the role within the parameters of her personality. This is still one of the most admired Tristan's ever recorded.


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