I heard 'Tristan und Isolde' in Berlin (Deutsche Oper) in 1981, and bawled my eyes out like never before at Isolde's 'Liebestot'. Why? People die of love -- shattered, broken-hearted -- every day. We must cease inflicting those 'thousand cuts' upon each other. AMEN.
Have you ever noticed that in the 1950’s and 60’s that all operas were played much slower than they are today? It’s so refreshing to sit and hear them played the way they were written.
the wonderful thing about Wagner's music is that it is ALL his. He was not accepted at musical academies for instruction, he couldn't find a piano teacher that would instruct him, so he taught himself piano and learned to compose on his own. His music comes from inside his soul. He performed his own research, wrote his own libretti, devised his own plots, designed his own opera house to play his music dramas inside. He believed that the world owed him a living for the beautiful creations he wove into existence and he was probably correct. Fortunately, he lived during a time when just such a person lived who would provide the money needed. Thank heaven for King Ludwig
What a beautiful, poetic comment George Park! You summed up all the things I find remarkable about Wagner. Indeed thank heavens for King Ludwig... and Wagner.
Excellent comment. Wagner(my gt,gt,Uncle) was fortunate I think that he did not get a piano teacher. It was a divine way to keep him from being being polluted by the limited, visionless nards of his day in music. Virgil Fox's rendition of it upon the Wanamaker Organ captures the harmonic and spiritual values like no other instrument on earth and in his hands lightens the soul.
@@Shahrdad My Friend, what ever did Wagner do to you? He not only was a musical and organisational genius, but he was a social justice, democratic revolutionary. He almost lost his head as well as the good post he had as Kappel Meister in Dresden due to his socialist leanings. He was anti-monarchist, anti-capitalist and he was for the common man and women! I can't see anything wrong with that, so why do you? Maybe it cld be your lack of education that is the problem? I send you ,my best regards, Robert Fraser. Australia.
Rarement on rencontre une symbiose totale entre la voix et l'orchestre . Furtwangler et Flagstad nous offre un moment sublime , inégalé dans l'histoire du chant . Ce moment béni transcende nos pauvres existences , et l'epoque médiocre et anxiogène que nous vivons . L'art demeure cette fenêtre ouverte vers l'infini...
The cadence in the final measures, when the tristan chord is reprised one last time, heavily disturbing the 'hopeful' key the final singing pitch settled in and then after all resolving into the final b major while you are still awestruck by the sound of Kirstens voice is almost unbearable, gets me every time - there is so much in there. You can feel all the joy and sadness at once. This is the absolute pinnacle of music for me. Genius. EDIT: Imagine Wagner would have ended the whole thing on the tristan chord without resolving into b major. This would have driven people into insanity.
The need for that b-major was set with literally the first sound, and the characters, singers and audience have been anticipating, waiting and yearning, for the entire five hours for that single ultimate moment of musical, sexual and spiritual resolution and apotheosis. Wagner was a terrible bastard but damned if this wasn't astonishing genius.
As an enraptured girl of 12yrs old, I met the towering woman that was Kirsten Flagstad and was rendered speechless by the bravura performance at Manchester's Free Trade Hall. At the Stage door, she presented me with a yellow rose (rare in 1952 Manchester) from her bouquet. But Michael, you are right, as a regular attendee of Glyndebourne, no one has come up to the stunning voice of Flagstad for me though many reach perfection. But she was peerless, stunning and I suppose that as a first experience for an impressionable little girl that would always be so.
Thank you for sharing, and you are more privileged than you can imagine. My first experience of opera was in Stockholm with Elisabeth Söderström as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro. In spite of the many wonderful performances that I have heard and that I remember, you have had a greater experience than many of us.
Mary Fallon I wish that I could have been with you that day! I was born in 1952 and wish that I was older so I could have seen the greatest dramatic soprano live in concert or opera! I was very good friends with her son-in-law the last seven years of his life, and that was a great honor and pleasure...
I can never forget the picture of recording with Flagstad painted by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau....he said the orchestra would play, and Flagstad would be knitting away until she heard her cue. She would put her knitting aside, stand up, and let loose with the most incredible high notes, beautifully sung, and then she’d sit down, pick up her knitting, and keep going until her next entrance! “Knitting for grandchildren!” F-D explained, his eyes dancing!
Mildly and gently, how he smiles, how the eye he opens sweetly --- Do you see it, friends? Don’t you see it? Brighter and brighter how he shines, illuminated by stars rises high? Don’t you see it? How his heart boldly swells, fully and nobly wells in his breast? How from his lips delightfully, mildly, sweet breath softly wafts --- Friends! Look! Don’t you feel and see it? Do I alone hear this melody, which wonderfully and softly, lamenting delight, telling it all, mildly reconciling sounds out of him, invades me, swings upwards, sweetly resonating rings around me? Sounding more clearly, wafting around me --- Are these waves of soft airs? Are these billows of delightful fragrances? How they swell, how they sough around me, shall I breathe, Shall I listen? Shall I drink, immerse? Sweetly in fragrances melt away? In the billowing torrent, in the resonating sound, in the wafting Universe of the World-Breath --- drown, be engulfed --- unconscious --- supreme delight!
The first time I heard Liebestod I was in a van with friends heading off for a day of shopping; riding 'shotgun' I got to choose the radio station and picked a local classical station, which was airing the opera. It was late in Act III when I tuned in. We were talking and I confess I wasn't paying much attention to the music until - Liebestod. I began to weep, sobbing, unable to speak - you know, I am sure. I have more control these days, but this performance takes me right back to that van with tears rolling down my face. Brava! And thank you for sharing it.
It is hypnotic. I spent a lot of time listening to it over and over when I was an early teen. Wagner. How lucky we were for him to have existed. Nobody else could have done it.
This piece connects me to so many things - my breath, my grief, my passions, my longing....the melody flows through my soul and takes me on this journey that is so fulfilling. And I feel every part of me is considered and transformed. Music is so magical.
Nothing, I mean nothing moves me as much as this! Wagner makes you feel emotions you haven't had since childhood, then has you experience new emotions you never knew you had.
I agree with you Mark. This piece always brings me to tears. It was cultivated within a divine shell like a perfect pearl, a celestial inspiration. It has such unexpected harmonics and the music opens around her voice like a choir of sympathetic angels. It just goes on melting the heart until the spirit ascends into the top of the head vibrating. More beautiful than the rising sun, more luminous than a divine light encased in crystal, set forever in a niche of lights. As tragic as blighted love pouring down a cliff in a rushing waterfall.
@@elizabethwallace7108 There are so many "single great pieces of music" to choose from. The Ciaconna from Bach's second partita. The marcia funebre from Beethoven's Eroica (Furtwängler and the Wiener Philharmoniker, December 1944). The Ricercare a 6 by Bach in the orchestration of Anton Webern. Verklarte Nacht by Schoenberg. And so many things outside the German and Central European tradition.
+Andrew 80 your comparison is right! what a singer, what a sweet and passionate heart, and I love the Jessye Norman version too, makes me cry of commotion !
I have been hearing this opera since I was seventeen years old and it s now 46 years and I have not come across any performance like Furtwangler's in these 63 years of mine. This will always be my # 1 performance.
+vicky smelcer Thank god, that he gave you this gift. How many people are not able to sense "absolute beauty". They hear this, or Gould playing Bach - and it does nothing to them. I feel sorry for these people, I really do.
True - I lick my wounds after a terrible argument online about Gould - with a pro too! - and now this Wagner (which I permit myself about once every two decades!) is solace indeed!
RUclips -- A platform creating the greatest avenue ever developed by human beings for providing absolute joy to other human beings who could never have experienced that joy without it. It feels like a library for my soul.
@@derya7603 But, Derya, i would never had learned about so many of these composers WITHOUT these RUclips posts. Not to mention everything i learn from the thoghtfull comments of seasoned listeners!
@@MontoyaMatrix Exactly. I only learned of this through reading the comments in a Maria Callas performance. RUclips is loaded with the worst examples of humanity, but at no other time in human existence have we had such a trove of treasures in the palm of our hand. This is magnificent.
It is clear in my mind that this is the most beautiful music or sound ever recorded, nothing can ever surpass this in beauty of sound. It is an everlasting sound and thus; ever-giving. It has infinite moods and yet just one. It shows fear, sadness, despair, hope, boldness and eternal euphoria, yet it is merely the sound of love. Tristan and Iseult might not be my favorite love story, but Wagner has put scribbles on paper to the sound that all lovers have, do, and will know if they love, and hearing this means you have a heart, and tearing up means you have felt true love. It is the sound of infinite, selfless, giving, caring, passionate, eternal, unsurpassed love and nothing more; what else could you want...
What a wonderful vocal range Kirsten Flagstad had. Liebestod is rapture for the ears. How wonderful to hear it again. A great piece of music and a great voice. Thank you.
I ponder as I listen in wonder to a some of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century, artists who rose up out of the ashes and moral ruin of the Second World War to produce such a magnificent interpretation. Some say it's the musical genius of Wagner that overcomes the depravity of the time, but on close listening, I can't help but credit the brilliance of the artists (Flagstad, Furtwangler and the Philharmonia) that allows listeners to pause and be moved barely 7 years after that conflagration. Some things human actions destroy, but those wonderous moments in music survive. This recording of the Liebestod is one of those moments.
Me da mucha pena que en mi pais Mexico, no haya una sola persona que opine de esta obra cumbre de la musica. Wagner fue el rival mas famoso de Verdi, sin embargo compuso este bellisimo poema musical exaltando el romance entre tristan e isolda, personajes miticos, y de alguna manera se adelanto al ruso tchaikovski quien le dio vida al poema musical Romeo y Julieta que es bellisimo tambien, a mis 75 años los he escuchado no menos de cien veces y nunca me cansare de volverlos a oir, felicidades y gratitud para quien nos gratifica con estas obras geniales.
La grandiosa noruega Kirsten Flagstad, la soprano wagneriana por excelencia! Basta escuchar esta aria dirigida por el no menos legendario Wilhelm Furtwängler para enchinarse la piel! A sus órdenes, mexicano de nacimiento y de corazón!
La música, aunque no precisamente esta versión, me recuerda también la escena final de la película Romeo y Julieta que grabaran en 1996 Claire Danes y Leonardo DiCaprio en la Parroquia del Purísmo Corazón de María en el corazón de la Colonia del Valle en CDMX...
What a performance. You can hear their connection to their tradition and history, to a tradition of musical interpretation and performance. It's something that can't be matched in merely note-perfect performances. Something of the European soul.
The iconic Flagstad and Furtwanger 1952 EMI recording ----- STILL the greatest recording of this opera in existence. One of the greatest recordings in the history of the music. Furtwangler was THE Wagner conductor and Flagstad, at age 57 (she was born in 1895!), continued to maintain her golden and shining instrument to make this never-to-be beaten complete recording. It's always a pleasure to hear this magical recording, around which all subsequent recordings must revolve around. A miracle all around.
I'm not knocking Kirsten Flagstad or Wilhelm Furtwangler, and this recording does justice to their legendary performances, though the primitive state of recording compared to latter days is becoming increasingly obvious through the years. I have listened to this recording many times, considering it the pinnacle it is, and treasure the original LP version of the whole work among my collection. However, I only recently came across Waltraud Meier singing this piece. I can't believe decades have gone by and I hadn't seen her before! She has had sensational write-ups across the continents, both as a "once in a lifetime" singer and for her stunning performances on stage, when she seems able to act incredibly AND sing like an angel! I'm now busy trying to acquire everything she's committed to disc and DVD - and there's plenty of it! Look her up! I'm sure you won't regret it!
This has to be one of the most evocative and transcendent pieces of art ever produced. There are romantic composers and then there is Wagner: he is immutable and absolute in his mastery of the human condition. This tour-de-force makes it easy to understand why Isolde would gladly jump into that burning funeral pyre--- to hear this music play!
Es imposible oir "esto"a la Flagstad sin llorar. Tengo la grabación desde hace 40 años y siempre, siempre hay lagrimas...y seguirá habiendolas, mientras yo siga con vida.
+Rodolfo MARTIN PARRA A couple of years ago I attended a perfomance of Tristan und Isolde in Bilbao. At the end of the performance, still day time, you could see guys in their prime crying like little children. Never seen anything like that in my life.
Yo reservo las lágrimas para la música en vivo, jamás para las grabaciones. Tengo varias grabaciones del Tristán (Fujrtwángler, Bohm, Barenboim, entre otras) y todas son conmovedoras. En vivo he escuchado tres veces esta ópera, la última con Waltraud Meier y Sigfried Jerusalem (con Barenboim) hacia el cambio de siglo. Aparte de Flagstad y Nilsson, otras grandes sopranos wagnerianas de aquellos años fueron Astrid Varnay y Martha Mödl.
Alan, I was a teen-ager when I was introduced to this music, which was used in a movie about a selfish violinist and a needy lover who commits suicide, by walking into the ocean, as the violinist is playing a transcription of the music at a concert: I can’t remember the title of the movie, I do remember that Joan Crawford and John Garfield were the lovers! Since then, I have been smitten by this seductive, gorgeous, irresistible-it is too sensual to be divine, but it IS other-worldly!!!
I wonder how many "Upstairs Downstairs " fans we have. Every tear my Mom and I watched the whole series. It was a ritual. Shes gone now.There is a scen where The mother of the show has gone to the opera with a friend of her son. They have had an affair. On this noght she will come to her senses. And the strains of this beautiful music punctuate every tear that covered my face. It was over. It couldnt be. Her husband knew but never said a word. She knew her place. She was a great lady. I remember my Mama when I hear this and our special evenings in her dementia ridden years. The show was always new to her.
Yes that was a great scene. Poor Lady Marjorie and Charles Hammond - and Richard Bellamy. In a much later episode, really at the end, James Bellamy is listening to I believe Lohengrin before he leaves Eaton Square to end his life.
Extraordinario Wagner ningún compositor ha escrito una música tan esplendorosa, y terriblemente Bella, Bella . Me sigo preguntando cómo Flagstad podía cantar así, es increíble su voz…parece que estuviera surfiando sobre una gran ola. Dios mío¡ Hay tanta belleza que el espíritu se estremece. ❤❤❤muchas, muchas gracias.
#Chris: What a great way to describe this. I kind of feel the same way about the conclusion of Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs. So beautiful that it makes you feel ready to go into the afterlife. "Surrender to the Ultimate" is an incredible way to express it. You hit the nail on the head with your observation. Congratulations!
Con el paso de los años regreso a esta obra una y otra vez, y a pesar de las versiones de Böhm, Karajan y Bernstein, la dirección de Fürtwangler es de lejos superior: el fraseo y canto de la Orquesta es insuperable. El timbre Flagstad me llena los ojos de lágrimas. Gracias por publicarlo.
All of your beautiful comments are as stirring as this sublime music. I was first introduced to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde through the Soundtrack to the film, Melancholia. Devastatingly, achingly, eternally beautiful and poignant...
El eterno e hipnótico Wagner. El si sabia como detener el tiempo y llevarnos a otra dimension. Agradezco haber pasado por la vida sin que esta música pase de largo de mi.
@@peterheisler4648 aunque sea utópico pero compositor de la talla de Ricardo Wagner se merece la eternidad.Es mi humilde y mejor homenaje.Dr.Roberto Óscar Leiva
Maravilloso! Furtwängler captura toda mi emoción y Kirsten Flagstad una de las mejores sopranos dramáticas que he escuchado haciendo honor a las óperas wagnerianas!
No me canso de escuchar y escuchar esta pieza y de conmoverme otro tanto. Además, cuánta perfección, belleza y emoción hay en ésta y en muchas piezas del maestro Wagner.
I my God I have cried hearing the Liebestod, I don't cry since I heard the 4th movement of the 6th symphony of Tchaikovsky. :) Simply shuddering, one of my favourite pieces of music of all time...
What an historical record. The music and the performance are a miracle. Indeed. One of the greatest recordings of the century. I also like Szell/Cleveland and Waltraud Meier for Tristan und Isolde.
Wagner is a reminder, nay a clarion call, necessary particularly today--a proclamation--that the white race shall go on forever, unto the stars above us, despite all the satanic forces of envy which wish us dead.
Get the Kleenex ready. Just as Baudelaire wrote to him in a famous piece of fan mail with no return address; Baudelaire's postscript: "I do not set down my address because you might think I wanted something from you." And because Wagner had already given him everything: "Quite often I experienced a sensation of a rather bizarre nature, which was the pride and the joy of understanding, of letting myself be penetrated and invaded - a really sensual delight that resembles that of rising in the air or tossing upon the sea. And the music at the same time would now and then resound with the pride of life. Generally these profound harmonies seemed to me like those stimulants that quicken the pulse of the imagination… There is everywhere something rapt and enthralling, something aspiring to mount higher, something excessive and superlative." February 17, 1860
@Greg Jacques Lucifer's Jizz Gargler Nina Simone! LOL! --- Oh, damn, we forgot that one Nina Simone recording! -- Gimmie a break. It's not like anyone gave a SHIT Jessye Norman died. And she was one of the greatest Richard Strauss interpreters. Yet Jessye wasn't even in the NEWS. That how low our culture and level of listening has degraded. All banter aside, Greg, i'm not trying to attack your view, i'm just saying that this type of sining is totally a 180 from what Nina was doing. And, also, you are trying to compare little three and four minutes songs to intricately developed full-length musical compositions. Not the same thing at all. Which is what made me laugh. Nina Simone's live recordings are very important, and thank God we have them. But to try to "argue" that Nina Simon's recordings were of the greatest? What was meant by that is that it is one of the greatest interpretations of Wagner that was recorded. Nobody "interpreted" la Niña. Nina was Nina, and nobody else.
![Eminem - Fuel (feat. JID) [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/t5H_CewqpKA/mqdefault.jpg)
I heard 'Tristan und Isolde' in Berlin (Deutsche Oper) in 1981, and bawled my eyes out like never before at Isolde's 'Liebestot'. Why? People die of love -- shattered, broken-hearted -- every day. We must cease inflicting those 'thousand cuts' upon each other. AMEN.
Beautiful sentiments. x
If there be a single peak of human existence, this is it.
Do you mean that time in history? Or do you mean effect of the music on experience?🦻
@@Gamster420 Essentially the latter, though I am going so far as to say that the music *is* that apex of humanity.
Thank you Germany , thank you Europe , thank you Richard Wagner.
Berlin, Furtwangler and Flagstad. What a treasure.
This was recorded in London with the Philharmonia.
Have you ever noticed that in the 1950’s and 60’s that all operas were played much slower than they are today? It’s so refreshing to sit and hear them played the way they were written.
what about Bernstein?
oh yeah bro i totally noticed that
NOT
Really ? Try Toscanini some time
True. Nowadays, musicians seem to hurry through each piece of music.
the wonderful thing about Wagner's music is that it is ALL his.
He was not accepted at musical academies for instruction,
he couldn't find a piano teacher that would instruct him,
so he taught himself piano and learned to compose on his own.
His music comes from inside his soul. He performed his own research,
wrote his own libretti, devised his own plots, designed his own opera
house to play his music dramas inside.
He believed that the world owed him a living for the beautiful creations he wove into existence and he was probably correct. Fortunately, he lived during a time when just such a person lived who would provide the money needed. Thank heaven for King Ludwig
What a beautiful, poetic comment George Park! You summed up all the things I find remarkable about Wagner. Indeed thank heavens for King Ludwig... and Wagner.
Excellent comment. Wagner(my gt,gt,Uncle) was fortunate I think that he did not get a piano teacher. It was a divine way to keep him from being being polluted by the limited, visionless nards of his day in music. Virgil Fox's rendition of it upon the Wanamaker Organ captures the harmonic and spiritual values like no other instrument on earth and in his hands lightens the soul.
Thanks, one of best comments I’ve ever read.
But, pls don’t tell me u enjoy Schoenberg too?
What is amazing is how a person as despicable as Wagner could compose such beautiful music.
@@Shahrdad My Friend, what ever did Wagner do to you? He not only was a musical and organisational genius, but he was a social justice, democratic revolutionary. He almost lost his head as well as the good post he had as Kappel Meister in Dresden due to his socialist leanings. He was anti-monarchist, anti-capitalist and he was for the common man and women! I can't see anything wrong with that, so why do you?
Maybe it cld be your lack of education that is the problem?
I send you ,my best regards,
Robert Fraser.
Australia.
Unübertrefflich!!! ABSOLUTER Wahnsinn!! Fantastisch!! Wunderbar!
Rarement on rencontre une symbiose totale entre la voix et l'orchestre . Furtwangler et Flagstad nous offre un moment sublime , inégalé dans l'histoire du chant . Ce moment béni transcende nos pauvres existences , et l'epoque médiocre et anxiogène que nous vivons . L'art demeure cette fenêtre ouverte vers l'infini...
Sans doute le plus grand moment dans toute l'histoire de la musique.
Merci, Marc-Aurele ...............................
Well said, Marc.
Mon coeur vibre avec le votre, cher Wagnérien........
Un sommet ! interprété par Jessy Norman c'est également à tomber à la renverse.
One of the truly great overture/preludes of all time conducted by the masterful Furtwangler near the end of his long career.
The cadence in the final measures, when the tristan chord is reprised one last time, heavily disturbing the 'hopeful' key the final singing pitch settled in and then after all resolving into the final b major while you are still awestruck by the sound of Kirstens voice is almost unbearable, gets me every time - there is so much in there. You can feel all the joy and sadness at once. This is the absolute pinnacle of music for me. Genius.
EDIT: Imagine Wagner would have ended the whole thing on the tristan chord without resolving into b major. This would have driven people into insanity.
The need for that b-major was set with literally the first sound, and the characters, singers and audience have been anticipating, waiting and yearning, for the entire five hours for that single ultimate moment of musical, sexual and spiritual resolution and apotheosis.
Wagner was a terrible bastard but damned if this wasn't astonishing genius.
Stunning, haven't heard for probably 20 years. The tears flow and the goose bumps make me shiver. Thx so much....
True...Do you know this? Lohengrin : ruclips.net/video/lqk4bcnBqls/видео.html
Or Parzival ? ruclips.net/video/8k41D9por6c/видео.html
@@kyrieeleison35 I agree fully.
As an enraptured girl of 12yrs old, I met the towering woman that was Kirsten Flagstad and was rendered speechless by the bravura performance at Manchester's Free Trade Hall. At the Stage door, she presented me with a yellow rose (rare in 1952 Manchester) from her bouquet. But Michael, you are right, as a regular attendee of Glyndebourne, no one has come up to the stunning voice of Flagstad for me though many reach perfection. But she was peerless, stunning and I suppose that as a first experience for an impressionable little girl that would always be so.
What a lovely story! Thank you for sharing this wonderful memory with us.
Thank you for sharing, and you are more privileged than you can imagine. My first experience of opera was in Stockholm with Elisabeth Söderström as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro. In spite of the many wonderful performances that I have heard and that I remember, you have had a greater experience than many of us.
Amazing memory! Yes, what a voice. Almost the only one I know, but sometimes one strikes lucky with what Fate sends...
Mary Fallon
I wish that I could have been with you that day! I was born in 1952 and wish that I was older so I could have seen the greatest dramatic soprano live in concert or opera! I was very good friends with her son-in-law the last seven years of his life, and that was a great honor and pleasure...
I envy you
The best version ever. Perfect symbiosis between voice and orchestra.
I can never forget the picture of recording with Flagstad painted by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau....he said the orchestra would play, and Flagstad would be knitting away until she heard her cue. She would put her knitting aside, stand up, and let loose with the most incredible high notes, beautifully sung, and then she’d sit down, pick up her knitting, and keep going until her next entrance! “Knitting for grandchildren!” F-D explained, his eyes dancing!
Knitting is meditation.
One of the top ten greatest recordings of all time. I heard it 60 years ago and became a devoted Wagnerian ever since.
When I listen this piece of music, I understand what a real love ist.
Mildly and gently,
how he smiles,
how the eye
he opens sweetly ---
Do you see it, friends?
Don’t you see it?
Brighter and brighter
how he shines,
illuminated by stars
rises high?
Don’t you see it?
How his heart
boldly swells,
fully and nobly
wells in his breast?
How from his lips
delightfully, mildly,
sweet breath
softly wafts ---
Friends! Look!
Don’t you feel and see it?
Do I alone hear this melody,
which wonderfully and softly,
lamenting delight,
telling it all,
mildly reconciling
sounds out of him,
invades me,
swings upwards,
sweetly resonating
rings around me?
Sounding more clearly,
wafting around me ---
Are these waves
of soft airs?
Are these billows
of delightful fragrances?
How they swell,
how they sough around me,
shall I breathe,
Shall I listen?
Shall I drink,
immerse?
Sweetly in fragrances
melt away?
In the billowing torrent,
in the resonating sound,
in the wafting Universe of the World-Breath ---
drown,
be engulfed ---
unconscious ---
supreme delight!
thank you for the english translated words
The first time I heard Liebestod I was in a van with friends heading off for a day of shopping; riding 'shotgun' I got to choose the radio station and picked a local classical station, which was airing the opera. It was late in Act III when I tuned in. We were talking and I confess I wasn't paying much attention to the music until - Liebestod. I began to weep, sobbing, unable to speak - you know, I am sure. I have more control these days, but this performance takes me right back to that van with tears rolling down my face. Brava! And thank you for sharing it.
It is hypnotic. I spent a lot of time listening to it over and over when I was an early teen. Wagner. How lucky we were for him to have existed. Nobody else could have done it.
And we're still blown away by this cat who lived before our great grandparents. I don't believe in heaven, but Wagner certainly must have!
Richard Wagner has put into music the act of love.............nothing can ever compare with it. He is a musical genius.
very beautiful
Of course he did.... He is a genius
the climax is somewhat lukewarm and not convincing imho
Not a good act of love.
Wagner speaks to my innermost being...
Yes. But love as a curse that could only be resolved through death.
When I was 15, I got this from the local library and listened to the whole thing in one go. It blew me away.
And well it should have: this recording is voted as the 100 greatest recordings of all time! You have a very understanding soul!
Furtwängler brings out the longing and the plaintiveness of the love theme so well that i unavoidably begin crying.
This piece connects me to so many things - my breath, my grief, my passions, my longing....the melody flows through my soul and takes me on this journey that is so fulfilling. And I feel every part of me is considered and transformed. Music is so magical.
Nothing, I mean nothing moves me as much as this! Wagner makes you feel emotions you haven't had since childhood, then has you experience new emotions you never knew you had.
Such power and beauty of that voice. Kirsten Flagstad rises to the ethereal, the noblest ideal of love.
One thing that you can immediately sense is the humanity of Furtwanglers conducting and the sheer beauty of Kirsten Flagstads voice.
If coronavirus destroys humanity I would play this as the finnal soundtrack of whole world.
It is a fairly apt soundtrack to the End.
Just like in "Melancholia"
Pentapus Your wish is granted, the end of the human race is already in progress so I‘m listening now😉
Ce prélude, je pourrais l'écouter en boucle.
95% of the virus spread would have been prevented if communism didn't exist in China. How many more lives have to be lost to communism?
Even I can tell Ms. Flagstad was exceptional. This is a "wow"! She was in her 50s when she did this. Born in 1895.
i just had goosebumps for 20 minutes, you know its real when they stay 2 minutes after the piece ends.
I agree with you Mark. This piece always brings me to tears. It was cultivated within a divine shell like a perfect pearl, a celestial inspiration. It has such unexpected harmonics and the music opens around her voice like a choir of sympathetic angels. It just goes on melting the heart until the spirit ascends into the top of the head vibrating. More beautiful than the rising sun, more luminous than a divine light encased in crystal, set forever in a niche of lights. As tragic as blighted love pouring down a cliff in a rushing waterfall.
CB You are a poet.
IMHO Liebestod is the single greatest piece of music ever written.
@@elizabethwallace7108 There are so many "single great pieces of music" to choose from. The Ciaconna from Bach's second partita. The marcia funebre from Beethoven's Eroica (Furtwängler and the Wiener Philharmoniker, December 1944). The Ricercare a 6 by Bach in the orchestration of Anton Webern. Verklarte Nacht by Schoenberg. And so many things outside the German and Central European tradition.
Thank you for this beautiful commentary.
Flagstad's voice is like a glass of finest malt on a cold winter night, rich and colorful and passionate and smooth. Incredible.
+Andrew 80 PERFECT AND MAGICAL COMMENT...WILL REMBER THIS...
+Andrew 80 your comparison is right! what a singer, what a sweet and passionate heart, and I love the Jessye Norman version too, makes me cry of commotion !
Such a beautiful comparison. The sheer beauty of Flagstad's voice never fails to send a shiver down my spine everytime I hear her.
I love a good malted milk!
That note at 16:50...The most sublime sound I have ever heard! Just heavenly!
I have been hearing this opera since I was seventeen years old and it s now 46 years and I have not come across any performance like Furtwangler's in these 63 years of mine. This will always be my # 1 performance.
I agree 100%!!!
Perhaps you were enthralled by Ms. Flagstad's participation?
@@oleflogger6828 That is secondary for me; vocals do not take priority. It is always the orchestral statement that matters to me.
이 시대의 슬픈 전율을 그대로 담아, 우리의 애달픔으로 다가 오네요. 좋은 연주 감사합니다.^^
...a magnificent performance, utterly overwhelming...
The most beautiful music I have ever heard. Nothng compares.
+vicky smelcer
Thank god, that he gave you this gift. How many people are not able to sense "absolute beauty".
They hear this, or Gould playing Bach - and it does nothing to them.
I feel sorry for these people, I really do.
vicky smelcer La
True - I lick my wounds after a terrible argument online about Gould - with a pro too! - and now this Wagner (which I permit myself about once every two decades!) is solace indeed!
@johann supper me too it will come eventually...
A divine gift indeed ………...
A divinely inspired masterpiece, by an unparalleled genius.
This defines what it is to be human.
Indeed...
I often think of beauty like this as redeeming us as humans.
You are my kinda people!
RUclips -- A platform creating the greatest avenue ever developed by human beings for providing absolute joy to other human beings who could never have experienced that joy without it. It feels like a library for my soul.
The composer, and the musicians create that library for you. If you are really so grateful for it go buy records!
trolls. . even here . . just listen to the music. .
What a precious expression you mention!
I absolutely agree with your opinion.
@@derya7603 But, Derya, i would never had learned about so many of these composers WITHOUT these RUclips posts. Not to mention everything i learn from the thoghtfull comments of seasoned listeners!
@@MontoyaMatrix Exactly. I only learned of this through reading the comments in a Maria Callas performance. RUclips is loaded with the worst examples of humanity, but at no other time in human existence have we had such a trove of treasures in the palm of our hand. This is magnificent.
It is clear in my mind that this is the most beautiful music or sound ever recorded, nothing can ever surpass this in beauty of sound. It is an everlasting sound and thus; ever-giving. It has infinite moods and yet just one. It shows fear, sadness, despair, hope, boldness and eternal euphoria, yet it is merely the sound of love. Tristan and Iseult might not be my favorite love story, but Wagner has put scribbles on paper to the sound that all lovers have, do, and will know if they love, and hearing this means you have a heart, and tearing up means you have felt true love. It is the sound of infinite, selfless, giving, caring, passionate, eternal, unsurpassed love and nothing more; what else could you want...
You are so right, Divine love is encapsulated in Wagner's eternal music. Yes, it brings tears but how lucky we are to have known such sublime love.
What a wonderful vocal range Kirsten Flagstad had. Liebestod is rapture for the ears. How wonderful to hear it again. A great piece
of music and a great voice. Thank you.
I ponder as I listen in wonder to a some of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century, artists who rose up out of the ashes and moral ruin of the Second World War to produce such a magnificent interpretation. Some say it's the musical genius of Wagner that overcomes the depravity of the time, but on close listening, I can't help but credit the brilliance of the artists (Flagstad, Furtwangler and the Philharmonia) that allows listeners to pause and be moved barely 7 years after that conflagration. Some things human actions destroy, but those wonderous moments in music survive. This recording of the Liebestod is one of those moments.
Me da mucha pena que en mi pais Mexico, no haya una sola persona que opine de esta obra cumbre de la musica. Wagner fue el rival mas famoso de Verdi, sin embargo compuso este bellisimo poema musical exaltando el romance entre tristan e isolda, personajes miticos, y de alguna manera se adelanto al ruso tchaikovski quien le dio vida al poema musical Romeo y Julieta que es bellisimo tambien, a mis 75 años los he escuchado no menos de cien veces y nunca me cansare de volverlos a oir, felicidades y gratitud para quien nos gratifica con estas obras geniales.
Soy mexicano. Hace unos cuarenta años me topé con esta pieza cimera. Gracias a Wagner por ella.
La grandiosa noruega Kirsten Flagstad, la soprano wagneriana por excelencia! Basta escuchar esta aria dirigida por el no menos legendario Wilhelm Furtwängler para enchinarse la piel! A sus órdenes, mexicano de nacimiento y de corazón!
La música, aunque no precisamente esta versión, me recuerda también la escena final de la película Romeo y Julieta que grabaran en 1996 Claire Danes y Leonardo DiCaprio en la Parroquia del Purísmo Corazón de María en el corazón de la Colonia del Valle en CDMX...
What a performance. You can hear their connection to their tradition and history, to a tradition of musical interpretation and performance. It's something that can't be matched in merely note-perfect performances. Something of the European soul.
Jack Wilton Just be more transparent with what you intend to imply here.
The iconic Flagstad and Furtwanger 1952 EMI recording ----- STILL the greatest recording of this opera in existence. One of the greatest recordings in the history of the music. Furtwangler was THE Wagner conductor and Flagstad, at age 57 (she was born in 1895!), continued to maintain her golden and shining instrument to make this never-to-be beaten complete recording. It's always a pleasure to hear this magical recording, around which all subsequent recordings must revolve around. A miracle all around.
Yes, Larry, it´s THE Performance. THE Gold Standard against which all others must be compared!!
I'm not knocking Kirsten Flagstad or Wilhelm Furtwangler, and this recording does justice to their legendary performances, though the primitive state of recording compared to latter days is becoming increasingly obvious through the years. I have listened to this recording many times, considering it the pinnacle it is, and treasure the original LP version of the whole work among my collection. However, I only recently came across Waltraud Meier singing this piece. I can't believe decades have gone by and I hadn't seen her before! She has had sensational write-ups across the continents, both as a "once in a lifetime" singer and for her stunning performances on stage, when she seems able to act incredibly AND sing like an angel! I'm now busy trying to acquire everything she's committed to disc and DVD - and there's plenty of it! Look her up! I'm sure you won't regret it!
@silverbud I agree
No doubt. It is STILL THE GREATEST RECORDING of this opera in existence. Indeed!
And her voice had already shown changes, and she was also suffering from arthritis, but rose to this occasion and it's wonderful. Simply amazing.
This has to be one of the most evocative and transcendent pieces of art ever produced. There are romantic composers and then there is Wagner: he is immutable and absolute in his mastery of the human condition. This tour-de-force makes it easy to understand why Isolde would gladly jump into that burning funeral pyre--- to hear this music play!
Beautifully said! Hear, hear (literally)!
aye. . . It's not bad fella m'lad. . . .
Brünnhilde jumped into the pyre, not Isolde.
@@jackdomanski6758 wrong, brunhilde is from Siegfried, not from tristan und isolde
lablous
I know...well, more precisely: Brünnhilde jumps in the pyre in Gotterdammerung.
Es imposible oir "esto"a la Flagstad sin llorar. Tengo la grabación desde hace 40 años y siempre, siempre hay lagrimas...y seguirá habiendolas, mientras yo siga con vida.
+Rodolfo MARTIN PARRA
A couple of years ago I attended a perfomance of Tristan und Isolde in Bilbao. At the end of the performance, still day time, you could see guys in their prime crying like little children. Never seen anything like that in my life.
+Jose A Zorrilla Sounds like Portugal is my kind of place. Greetings from Norway.
,
våren
Rodolfo MARTIN PARRA 😪
Yo reservo las lágrimas para la música en vivo, jamás para las grabaciones. Tengo varias grabaciones del Tristán (Fujrtwángler, Bohm, Barenboim, entre otras) y todas son conmovedoras. En vivo he escuchado tres veces esta ópera, la última con Waltraud Meier y Sigfried Jerusalem (con Barenboim) hacia el cambio de siglo. Aparte de Flagstad y Nilsson, otras grandes sopranos wagnerianas de aquellos años fueron Astrid Varnay y Martha Mödl.
Mil veces llevo oída esta versión, y cada vez es más hermosa!!! Es colosal, es increíble!!!!!!!!
WAGNER so beautiful your music it take's you into another world.
This is amazing to hear. Furtwangler keeps a smooth tempo flow in the prelude, so it makes more sense that most current performances.
incomparable I have just had every emotion torn out of my soul
Alan, I was a teen-ager when I was introduced to this music, which was used in a movie about a selfish violinist and a needy lover who commits suicide, by walking into the ocean, as the violinist is playing a transcription of the music at a concert: I can’t remember the title of the movie, I do remember that Joan Crawford and John Garfield were the lovers! Since then, I have been smitten by this seductive, gorgeous, irresistible-it is too sensual to be divine, but it IS other-worldly!!!
me too
@@davidsolomon8203 Humoresque
knezzoran Thank you for reminding me of the movie title from so many years ago!!!
It does exhaust your heart - amazing music and performance
Are you kidding me? Maybe the greatest recording in history. The hell with the 20th century.
Well now, did we have any recordings before the 20th century? Hmmmmm?
Thank you!
anbd2016 I think you meant the 21st century. This was recorded in the 20th century...
Guys, he/she is saying that the claim that it is best best of the 20th century is meaningless as it is the greatest of any century.
@@oleflogger6828 Plenty, but most of them just over 2 minutes long and barely audible.
I wonder how many "Upstairs Downstairs " fans we have. Every tear my Mom and I watched the whole series. It was a ritual. Shes gone now.There is a scen where The mother of the show has gone to the opera with a friend of her son. They have had an affair. On this noght she will come to her senses. And the strains of this beautiful music punctuate every tear that covered my face. It was over. It couldnt be. Her husband knew but never said a word. She knew her place. She was a great lady. I remember my Mama when I hear this and our special evenings in her dementia ridden years. The show was always new to her.
Yes that was a great scene. Poor Lady Marjorie and Charles Hammond - and Richard Bellamy.
In a much later episode, really at the end, James Bellamy is listening to I believe Lohengrin before he leaves Eaton Square to end his life.
@@murrayaronson3753 Lady Marjorie died on the Titanic. That made me so sad.
Magnificent. I was weaned on this recording. It still stirs my soul!
RUclips must be desperate to wreck this genius filled music with ads.
A summit for our civilisation …………..
yes...alwais i felt the same.
Ein Seelenkuss.
Boy I had forgotten how terrific she was in this performance--and I even own the CDs! Thanks.
Extraordinario Wagner ningún compositor ha escrito una música tan esplendorosa, y terriblemente Bella, Bella . Me sigo preguntando cómo Flagstad podía cantar así, es increíble su voz…parece que estuviera surfiando sobre una gran ola. Dios mío¡ Hay tanta belleza que el espíritu se estremece. ❤❤❤muchas, muchas gracias.
like lying down in a mossy area in a dark forest clearing ready to surrender to the Ultimate. and beautiful.
#Chris:
What a great way to describe this. I kind of feel the same way about the conclusion of Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs. So beautiful that it makes you feel ready to go into the afterlife. "Surrender to the Ultimate" is an incredible way to express it. You hit the nail on the head with your observation. Congratulations!
Larry Mitchell I am a feeling being :-)
#Chris:
Of that I have no doubt.
What a voice - beautiful!!!
Magnificent and breathtaking... I am having trouble breathing at this moment
Her high notes are like a explosion. What a strengh. Fantastic Flagstad. And the Orchestra the same. I like to see these classics executions.
The pinnacle of musical artistry. A wonderful listening experience
Cómo no escuchar a la Flagstad y a Furtwängler sin que se le estremezcan a uno hasta la última fibra de nuestro ser! Insuperable!
An absolutely astounding voice! One has to sit alone and be still after hearing this. Thank you for sharing.
Q obra tan maravillosa ...es otra dimension...cumbre de la creacion humana.❤❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇❇
What a disgrace to put ads on such wonderful masterpieces : shame on you RUclips !...
Words fail me I am lost in the moment , Stunning !
Thank you God.....Flagstad is divine in her Liebestod {transfiguration}.....
The best I have heard
Can't believe I'd not heard this recording before; it always churns me up inside emotionally before, but this is beyond words. Just wrecked...
Such a beatifull music, I cried listening to this.
my god, as beautifull it is.....what a stunning orchestral performance...
What can one say? I am just stunned by this magnificent performance!
Recorded 28 years before I was born. Yet still fresh. Incredible.
I feel like she is taking me on a journey to somewhere I have never been. She still remains today a measuring stick for much of Wagner's genius.
Con el paso de los años regreso a esta obra una y otra vez, y a pesar de las versiones de Böhm, Karajan y Bernstein, la dirección de Fürtwangler es de lejos superior: el fraseo y canto de la Orquesta es insuperable. El timbre Flagstad me llena los ojos de lágrimas. Gracias por publicarlo.
All of your beautiful comments are as stirring as this sublime music. I was first introduced to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde through the Soundtrack to the film, Melancholia. Devastatingly, achingly, eternally beautiful and poignant...
El eterno e hipnótico Wagner. El si sabia como detener el tiempo y llevarnos a otra dimension. Agradezco haber pasado por la vida sin que esta música pase de largo de mi.
Wow I have never heard her before, I only listen to more recent recordings, but amazing clarity and voice. Tears. Just beautiful.
And she was 57 when she made the recording.
@@peterheisler4648 aunque sea utópico pero compositor de la talla de Ricardo Wagner se merece la eternidad.Es mi humilde y mejor homenaje.Dr.Roberto Óscar Leiva
Maravilloso! Furtwängler captura toda mi emoción y Kirsten Flagstad una de las mejores sopranos dramáticas que he escuchado haciendo honor a las óperas wagnerianas!
The best I have ever heard!
Greatest composer.Greatest recording.Greatest orchestra.Greatest singer.And greatest conductor of the world.
My dear GOD what genius...I cried during this...GOD how I love this man...
So did he.
No me canso de escuchar y escuchar esta pieza y de conmoverme otro tanto. Además, cuánta perfección, belleza y emoción hay en ésta y en muchas piezas del maestro Wagner.
It's really powerful and beautiful. Amazing Flagstad.
I my God I have cried hearing the Liebestod, I don't cry since I heard the 4th movement of the 6th symphony of Tchaikovsky. :) Simply shuddering, one of my favourite pieces of music of all time...
I love, love....LOVE this post! Vielen Dank DjangoMan! It is supreme.
What an historical record. The music and the performance are a miracle. Indeed. One of the greatest recordings of the century. I also like Szell/Cleveland and Waltraud Meier for Tristan und Isolde.
This is the music of heaven
¡SUBLIME! No encuentro otro adjetivo para calificar el canto magistral de Kirsten Flagstad....Emociona su Isolda. Arte puro.
A summit for our civilisation ......
What the heck does that suppose to mean? Its an opera about 2 lovers, what does civilization has to do with this.
rober Acevedo My sincere condolences.
@@roberacevedo8232 Idiot.
Wagner is a reminder, nay a clarion call, necessary particularly today--a proclamation--that the white race shall go on forever, unto the stars above us, despite all the satanic forces of envy which wish us dead.
@@nonesuch27 Shut up Nazi
perfect combination, Flagstad and Furtwangler
Quelques parts dans le temps pour l homme que j aime profonde gratitude merci
Quite simply sublime.
This recording is absolute magic.
La voce più commovente del secolo scorso .Grazie Madame Flagstad
Get the Kleenex ready. Just as Baudelaire wrote to him in a famous piece of fan mail with no return address; Baudelaire's postscript: "I do not set down my address because you might think I wanted something from you." And because Wagner had already given him everything:
"Quite often I experienced a sensation of a rather bizarre nature, which was the pride and the joy of understanding, of letting myself be penetrated and invaded - a really sensual delight that resembles that of rising in the air or tossing upon the sea. And the music at the same time would now and then resound with the pride of life. Generally these profound harmonies seemed to me like those stimulants that quicken the pulse of the imagination… There is everywhere something rapt and enthralling, something aspiring to mount higher, something excessive and superlative." February 17, 1860
IMHO the best Tristan and Isolde recording of the last Century
I agree. One of the greatest recordings of the 20th century.
@Greg Jacques Lucifer's Jizz Gargler Nina Simone! LOL! --- Oh, damn, we forgot that one Nina Simone recording! -- Gimmie a break. It's not like anyone gave a SHIT Jessye Norman died. And she was one of the greatest Richard Strauss interpreters. Yet Jessye wasn't even in the NEWS. That how low our culture and level of listening has degraded. All banter aside, Greg, i'm not trying to attack your view, i'm just saying that this type of sining is totally a 180 from what Nina was doing. And, also, you are trying to compare little three and four minutes songs to intricately developed full-length musical compositions. Not the same thing at all. Which is what made me laugh. Nina Simone's live recordings are very important, and thank God we have them. But to try to "argue" that Nina Simon's recordings were of the greatest? What was meant by that is that it is one of the greatest interpretations of Wagner that was recorded. Nobody "interpreted" la Niña. Nina was Nina, and nobody else.
@Greg Jacques Lucifer's Jizz Gargler Thanks, Niña. Hugggs!
Thank you, Kirsten, for giving us a peek of heaven. No less than Godlike perfection.