Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

    Well, I'd say more than just the purists are shaking their heads.
    Liberace used to provide his listeners with more enjoyable per-
    formances of Beethoven by "taking out the slow, boring parts."
    Would you call someone displeased by that practice a purist?
     A Wagner purist, if we're not to abuse the term, might be someone
    who insists that the 4 music dramas be presentes on successive 
    evenings, or that a live bear be used in Siegfrieds taunting of
    Mime (as the composer directed), but, well.....here's what the
    reviewer for Stereophile had to say.(OCT 1988)
    
    Maazel's concept is mildly interesting; a seamless "suite" some 70
comprised of Der Ring Des Nibelungen's greatest hits, every note of
it Wagner's own. The reality, however, is a new nadir in Telarc's
seemingly never-ending search for tastelessness.
 Bleeding chunks, indeed. To the serious Wagner listener, the standard
concert excerpts- The entry of the Gods into Valhalla, the Ride of the
Valkyries, the Forest Murmurs, Siegfried's Rhine Journey, and the Funeral
March- are wrenching enough, as often as not conducted by those with little
or no knowledge of the Ring's overall architecture, let alone the signif-
icance of the many leitmotifs that appear even in these brief edits.But
at least these standard selectione, arranged for the most part by Wagner
himself, are (with the exception of the Rhine Journey\Funeral March) lifted
whole cloth from the ring.Not so in this "medley". The seams are ragged,
square-holed/round-pegged, ill-fitting at best. If Wagner's was "the art of 
transition", arranger Maazel's is the art, no better than tape-splicing, of
jarring, continuity-destroying juxtaposition.
 This might have been less offensive had Maazel's conducting been more
incisive and less hacking, had he been interested in something besides
rushing off to the next overblown climax. But Maazel waxes bellicose, bone-
crushing, and boorish, reducing Wagner's rich, fascinating music to a bad
film score. Even Maazel's humorous liner notes have more lasting value, and
the BPO may as well be the Cincinatti Pops. I'd much rather have had a "Ring
without Words" than what Telarc has given us; a Ring without Music.
 What's the point? Surely Wagner's Music is well known enough by now to be
spared such CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED treatment. This is the sort of thing that
only Stokowski could have pulled off. Maybe. Those unfamiliar with or
predudiced against Wagner's music will only have their worst preconceptions
confirmed here. Granted it's interesting to hear a few passages you'll never
have heard without singers, but all that does is underline just how important
the voices really are in Wagner's music dramas.(As do Maazel's pale substi-
tutions of instruments in vocal lines)
 The sound is bloated, puffed up, suffering obesely from mid-range bulge. 
Sure, the tympani are great, and the engineers have fun with the thunder
and the Nibelung's anvils, but this release is handled with all the sonic
finesse of Hollywood's Greatest Hits and Roundup. Enough already, Telarc.
-Richard Lehnert

    If you want 'bleeding chunks' of the ring, I suggest the following:
    
    Klauss Tennstedt and the Berlin Philharmonic on EMI
     or
    Zubin Mehta (really!) and the NY Philharmonic on  CBS (now a budget
    release.
    
    I don't reccomend Solti's recording of the chunks -- it's oddly
    lifeless (considering that his complete recording of the Ring
    from the sixties is so wonderful).
    

    Strange, I have both the full Solti Ring(london) and the Chunky
    Solti, and I find them both very enjoyable (chunky Solti in the
    car, and Classic Solti at home)
    
    I guess it's a matter of taste...