If only all (or even most) of Abbado’s Berlin recordings had been this good! What we have here, quite simply, is one of the most drop-dead gorgeous Wagner albums available today. Abbado takes the opening of the Tannhäuser Overture at a good clip–none of that Gothic murk at glacial tempos that so often passes for “grandeur” in this music; and when the trombones blast out the tune they do so with real nobility, never forcing the tone. The central bacchanal actually sounds sexy rather than cartoonish, and it rises to a satisfyingly frenetic climax. As a disc opener, this couldn’t be more promising, and the rest of the program doesn’t let us down.
The only thing wrong with the Parsifal Prelude is a touch of audience noise (a couple of these items are live recordings) where you really want absolute silence. It’s a gentle, luminous reading that once again achieves solemnity without a trace of heaviness. Following the prelude, Abbado (or someone unnamed) has assembled a “suite” from the third act of the same opera, consisting of the Good Friday music (fabulously played solos from oboe and clarinet), the transformation scene with its darkly booming deep bells, the Knight’s Procession (well sung by the Swedish Radio Choir), and the closing chorus. It works extremely well and nicely summarizes the general drift of the opera in 25 finely played and conducted minutes.
The program closes with Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. At the very opening of the prelude the cellos sound a bit thin-toned, again probably due to the circumstances of the live recording (contrast this to the overwhelming bass lines in the Parsifal transformation scene), but as soon as the music gets going the temperature starts to rise, and it all culminates in a thrillingly passionate Liebestod, as spontaneously and effortlessly conducted as we are ever likely to hear on or off discs. The strings of the Berlin Philharmonic steal the show, as they so often do, but throughout all of the music there’s an ensemble cohesion, a balance, and a real feel of musicians actually listening to each other that’s so often missing in Abbado’s recordings from Berlin. He may be “officially” gone (these performances date from 2000 and 2002), but he evidently went out with a bang–and good for him.
