We think of Richard Wagner as an orchestrator of epic proportions – the six harps and 18 anvils of Das Rheingold, for instance – but he was one of the few great composers to consistently create at the keyboard, and that’s where all his great operas began.
As a student he wrote a piano transcription of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, so we should not be surprised that the eminent Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky has taken some of his own arrangements into the recording studio. And with stunning results. Forget the soaring horns, shimmering strings and crashing brass and restore your ears to factory settings. These eight tracks of excerpts from five operas are not a reduction, more a resurrection of the glorious music as it came to the composer’s ears and fingers.
Louis Brassin’s sparkling versions of Entry of the Gods into Valhalla from Das Rheingold, with some additions by Lugansky, and Magic Fire Music from Die Walküre, both set the tone splendidly. Lugansky’s own arrangements from Götterdämmerung were conceived 20 years ago and completed just before recording. The Love Duet and the Rhine Journey build beautifully to the Funeral March – truly in this version a worthy companion to Liszt’s B-flat Sonata.
Brünnhilde’s Immolation is a startling pianistic tour de force carried off with aplomb, although Lugansky must have felt he was wrestling single-handedly with an anaconda.
The Transformation Music and Finale from Parsifal boasts three arrangers – Felix Mottl, Zoltán Kocsis and Lugansky – and this wonderful disc ends with a sensitive version of Liszt’s Isolde’s Liebestod.
Composer: Wagner
Works: Famous Opera Scenes
Performer: Nikolai Lugansky p
Label: Harmonia Mundi HMM 902393
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