BaL 21.11.20 - Mozart: Die Zauberflöte, K620

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Heavens above Alpie - the Klemperer is sensational by miles my favourite .

I may just take your implied advice and order it. I just seem to have many versions already.

[ARBurton]

Your description made me keen to get to know this version with a number of singers I like in the cast. (I only recently got to know its Pamina, Genia Kühmeier, via a lovely album Dvorák Songs & Duets with Bernarda Fink). I haved no DVD at the moment, only an ancient VHS of the Ingmar Bergman 1975 TV version which I remember loving but haven't seen for ages.

My current CD versions are Böhm BPO (with Fritz Wunderlich as Tamino), the classic Beecham -also BPO, and Östman. All recommendable but I suspect they all have reasons not to be BaL winners.

I remember seeing that Bergman film on tv years ago. Filmed at Drottningholm, I think, sung in Swedish, with the really rather lovely name of Trollfloten if memory serves

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Heavens above Alpie - the Klemperer is sensational by miles my favourite .

Now ordered. My first ever Klemperer CD!

[Bryn]

Now ordered. My first ever Klemperer CD!

Wow! You don't even have his Fidelio?

[Pulcinella]

Now ordered. My first ever Klemperer CD!

Which must mean that he didn't record a certain piece of Strauss, or presumably you would have snapped it up: any idea why not?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Which must mean that he didn't record a certain piece of Strauss, or presumably you would have snapped it up: any idea why not?

In Klemperer’s time, the Strauss work to which I think you are alluding, was considered to be weak and overblown. Conductors like Klemperer and Reiner shunned it. Things are very different now, which is why I’m permanently hard up.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Wow! You don't even have his Fidelio?

No - does everyone have this?

I have Furtwängler, Maazel and Dohnanyi.

But I did once have the Vox VSO/Klemperer Missa Solemnis, when it was issued on a single CD.

[Ein Heldenleben]

No - does everyone have this?

I have Furtwängler, Maazel and Dohnanyi.

But I did once have the Vox VSO/Klemperer Missa Solemnis, when it was issued on a single CD.

I have the Klemperer Fidelio largely because I don’t think a cast of that quality comes about more than a few times a century .
They’ve just played the first movt of the Furtwangler / BPO Unfinished on Essential Classics - you just don’t get that freedom of tempo, rubato and phrase shaping any more..

[Barbirollians]

Hope you like it EA it has one hell of a cast and none of the annoying dialogue and Popp is fabulous as the Queen of the Night .

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Hope you like it EA it has one hell of a cast and none of the annoying dialogue and Popp is fabulous as the Queen of the Night .

I'll let you know.

[Wolfram]

Hope you like it EA it has one hell of a cast and none of the annoying dialogue and Popp is fabulous as the Queen of the Night .

And Gundula Janowitz...and Walter Berry...and Gerhard Unger...and Franz Crass...etc,etc...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And Gundula Janowitz...and Walter Berry...and Gerhard Unger...and Franz Crass...etc,etc...

EMI had a superb range of artists on their books that time.

[LHC]

Hope you like it EA it has one hell of a cast and none of the annoying dialogue and Popp is fabulous as the Queen of the Night .

It was Lucia Popp’s first recording. She was just 24 years old, having only made her professional debut in Bratislava the year before. As I recall, she was at the time very inexperienced, and to the horror of the producers and other singers, she turned up on the day they were due to record her arias and announced she had just been to the dentist as she had a toothache. Happily the dentist’s work didn’t have any impact on her ability to sing, and she recorded both arias without any problems; indeed hers are still amongst the very finest recordings of the Queen’s arias.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It was Lucia Popp’s first recording. She was just 24 years old, having only made her professional debut in Bratislava the year before. As I recall, she was at the time very inexperienced, and to the horror of the producers and other singers, she turned up on the day they were due to record her arias and announced she had just been to the dentist as she had a toothache. Happily the dentist’s work didn’t have any impact on her ability to sing, and she recorded both arias without any problems; indeed hers are still amongst the very finest recordings of the Queen’s arias.

She probably thought about the dentist when she had to sing those extreme high Fs.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The Klemperer set arrived on my doormat this morning. I’ve got as far as the Queen of the Night’s first aria, and Popp is indeed superb. I don’t think I’ll ever want to hear another singer in this role now. I feel same way about her in Strauss’s Four Last Songs.

Update: I've reached the first "I don't like" aspect of this recording. The three boys sound as though they've been rehearsing with the BBC Singers.