Last time I checked, the Siegfried Idyll was not a concert overture. It’s a pity, really, because Wagner did write more than we find here, including the excellent Faust Overture and Rule Britannia Overture. Had they been included, we would have had a very handy disc of rarely played music, and a nice “filling in the gaps title.” But no, Jun Märkl decided not to include those, for some reason, and so the result is only fitfully recommendable.
The reason, though, isn’t just because of the presence of the Idyll. No, the problem is that no great composer’s career began less promisingly than Wagner’s. Most of the music is awful. There’s fake Beethoven (Concert Overtures 1 and 2), fake Weber (Die Feen), fake vaguely Italian someone-or-other (Das Liebesverbot)–in short, anything but real Wagner. The performances are fine, and so is the sound (though I prefer a quicker tempo for the Idyll), but just how interesting is a good performance of mostly bad music? You be the judge.
