Word: wagnerians
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Fighting words in any language. Still, Wagner should not be blamed for Hitler's final solution, even though it is true that the Fuhrer -- who saw himself as a Siegfried-like embodiment of the Wagnerian Teutonic ideal -- was lionized annually at the Bayreuth festival and Wagner's music sometimes sounded in the death camps. That says more about Hitler than Wagner -- who had by then been dead for a half-century and was not responsible for the misuse of his works by the Nazis...
...Berlin Radio Symphony (London/Decca, 2 CDs). The high-water mark of late -- really late -- romanticism, Gurrelieder will come as a revelation to those who equate Schoenberg with the chilly 12-tone system. The fiery song cycle, really a music drama about doomed love and transcendence, gets a voluptuous Wagnerian reading from Chailly...
...Berlin Radio Symphony (London/Decca, 2 CDs). The high-water mark of late -- really late -- romanticism, Gurrelieder will come as a revelation to those who equate Schoenberg with the chilly 12-tone system. The fiery song cycle, really a music drama about doomed love and transcendence, gets a voluptuous Wagnerian reading from Chailly...
...CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR YOU FROM PHIL SPECTOR (ABKCO Records). A card-carrying classic; not only the definitive Christmas house shaker but also a paradigm of Wagnerian rock at its most ingenuous. From the Ronettes melting the heart of Frosty the Snowman to Darlene Love's soul-scorching Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), this is Phil Spector's grandest production...
...lost none of her taste or technique, but the nap is off that mezzo velvet. Hildegard Behrens, 54, an inspired dramatic actress, is now far easier to look at than listen to in the arduous roles she favors. A dozen years ago, handsome Peter Hofmann, 46, was a Wagnerian's dream of a heldentenor; today he mostly sings...