GREAT RECORDINGS phase 17

WAGNER
Die Walküre Act 3

Astrid Varnay
Leonie Rysanek
Sigurd Björling

Herbert von Karajan
Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele
1951

3 80024 2

Mono
ADD

Recorded 1951
68 minutes

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"Here is the first-ever live recording to be issued of a whole act of an opera at Bayreuth. In clear, fresh sound produced by the engineers at Abbey Road Studios, we can hear Astrid Varnay as Brünnhilde, already a formidable and engrossing interpreter of the role, the articulate and authoritative Sigurd Björling as Wotan and the young Leonie Rysanek rising superbly to the news that she is soon to be the mother of Siegfried. Karajan fills the music with fiery incandescence from start to finish, drawing exact and dedicated playing fom the new Bayreuth orchestra."
(The Gramophone)

This recording was made live at the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival in the summer of 1951. Audiences there heard two complete Ring cycles, one under the veteran Hans Knappertsbusch, the other in the hands of the 43-year-old rising star Herbert von Karajan (who also rehearsed Knappertsbusch’s performances).