Georg Solti | Hans Knappertsbusch | Wolfgang Sawallisch | Astrid Varnay | Herbert von Karajan | Lionel Friend

Recorded illustrated talks by Dr Paul Dawson-Bowling covering great Wagner artists

Available on double CD sets at £8 a set (including UK shipping)

Georg Solti – Hungarian Dynamo (talk)

Georg Solti was the first conductor to make a complete studio recording of the Ring, and he then went on to record the entire canon on Wagner’s big ten, with one single record company – Decca. This presentation discusses Solti’s galvanising excitement in Wagner.

>> Buy the double CD set for £8

 

Hans Knappertsbusch – Master of the Ring (talk)

Hans Knappertsbusch has left three complete Ring cycles on the CD from Bayreuth as well as two extra sets of Götterdämmerung, one more from Bayreuth, and one from Munich. The author explains and illustrates why Knappertsbusch’s versions are simply incomparable for greatness of spirit.

>> Buy the double CD set for £8

 

Wolfgang Sawallisch – Wagner Champion of the World (talk)

Sawallisch is the only conductor to have left CD versions of all Wagner’s 13 stage-works, some more than once. The talk describes Sawallisch’s extraordinary career and illustrates his phenominal achievement.

>> Buy the double CD set for £8

 

Astrid Varnay – Goddess of the North (talk)

Astrid Varnay made her operatic debut at a Metropolitan Opera broadcast performance in 1941, when her Sieglinde was heard by an estimated minimum of 10 million people. The presentation reveals the background to this extraordinary event, and explains the illustrious career that justly followed.

>> Buy the double CD set for £8

 

An Ecstatic Lyricism – Karajan and Wagner (talk)

During the course of Karajan’s meteoric and perilous career, he came to fuse a special fire and passion with an extraordinary beauty of sound; and these CDs reveal why Gundula Janowitz, one of his favourite sopranos, was right, when it came to Wagner, to say, “He is just so different”.

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An evening with Lionel Friend (interview)

A great and underrated conductor in conversation with Paul Dawson-Bowling – revealing ideas that are as special and illuminating as his all too rare performances of Wagner. Extracts from those performances are used to illustrate the telling insights which he offers into Wagner.

>> Buy the double CD set for £8