Imaginative program and fine performances with good sound
Performances of both of these two works are very rare and this imaginative coupling allows us to investigate both. The links between the two works go further than just the name 'Faust' in their titles.
Wagner had initially intended to write a symphony on the theme of Faust but got no further than the completed opening movement and sketches for the second Gretchen movement. He then converted the completed first movement into an overture which was first performed in 1844 by the orchestra that eventually became the Dresden Staatskapelle as on this disc. After this, Wagner later discussed in considerable detail his previous plans to write a symphony on Faustian themes with Liszt who was later to become his father-in-law. Subsequently Liszt went ahead with a Faust Symphony mirroring Wagner's concept while Wagner himself re-worked his 1844 Faust overture with the final version of 1855 being the one heard on this disc.
The 1855 Wagner overture is an interesting and...
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
Only I am not sure that Christian Thielemann has even one eye. This painfully dull performance of the "Faust" Symphony, with slack climaxes and sluggish tempi, receives two stars only because video recordings of Liszt's orchestral masterpiece (NOT "the" masterpiece; it's one among many) are such a rarity, because the quality of the sound and the picture is tolerably high, because Thielemann's moronic physiognomy is rather amusing, and because I am in a fairly good mood. But the truth is that I have tried to watch it three times - and I have seen all of it but once. Visually it's a great improvement over DG's hilariously ugly DVD of Bernstein with the BSO from 1976. Musically Thielemann's sedated "interpretation" is light years behind Bernstein's rendition (which is no great shakes in the first place). Small wonder that Liszt's orchestral music is still grossly underappreciated. It will remain so until it is so...
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