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Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen (assorted soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana, Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting; Seraphim, 19 LPs, $53.98). With Beethoven and Brahms, Furtwängler could be infuriatingly eccentric. When he was conducting Wagner, though, his stately, expansive, analytic style produced performances that were ingeniously congruent with the composer's convoluted purpose. Drawn from a 1953 series of radio broadcasts from Rome in mono sound that ranges from only dim to adequate, this is a Ring that every Wagnerian will at least want to hear, and probably own as a low-priced...
Furtwängler was totally different -a very Germanic, mystic type who managed to impose his almost religious view of music on the players. This resulted in absolutely superb performances too. During the '20s and '30s, Furtwängler and Toscanini were the greatest conductors. Now Georg Solti and Herbert von Karajan are the greatest, and in somewhat the same way, with Solti comparable to Toscanini and Karajan to Furtwangler...
...defiant reply to the doubting voices of tradition: "Some people treat us as if we were still kids in the playpen. All of us have already done enough to be more highly regarded than that. I think we will be as great as the generation of Furtwängler and Toscanini...
...Tempest. To keep in touch with distant friends, Mehta runs up telephone bills of $1,500 a month, thinks nothing of playing recordings by the great German Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler over a transcontinental wire to Barenboim. Sleepless in New York City at 5 a.m. one day just before New Year's, he suddenly realized that in Vienna, where it was 11 a.m., the Vienna Philharmonic would be playing one of its traditional New Year's Johann Strauss concerts. He put in a call to the concert hall, had the manager hold the phone...
...three new labels, Seraphim ("Angels of the highest order") has the brightest roster of musicians, including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Wilhelm Furtwängler. Philips' World Series has less prominent but still lustrous names (Clara Haskil, Marcel Dupré) and an equally broad selection of works. Epic's Crossroads, the only one of the trio with all recent, all truly stereophonic recordings, has culled its list from that of the Czechoslovak firm Supraphon and thus gives voice to the Czech Philharmonic, the Smetana Quartet, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Some jewels in new settings...