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Keilberth's magnificent stereo Flying Dutchman Brilliant, dramatic new stereo remastering of this 1955 Bayreuth classic
I came to transfer this recording almost by accident - I had taken delivery of a new stereo LP replay cartridge and, having fitted it to my tonearm, picked up the nearest stereo record to hand, which happened to be the first disc of the three issued by Decca in the mid-1970s which make up this recording. Having been duly astonished by the sound quality I was hearing from the LP, I decided to record a short section for comparison to the existing CD issue of the same recording, and found the Decca LPs to be far more to my liking, with much more life to them than the rather dead and flat (by comparison) 2006 CD transfer. As a result I ended up transferring the entire opera from my near-mint pressings and set about the minimal work required to remove occasional clicks, before applying 32-bit XR remastering technology to the transfer. This served to further enhance the already fabulous sound of the LPs. Meanwhile a US correspondent and Wagner aficionado contacted me to point out that the original mono LP issue of the recording had included fanfares and theatre bells which were omitted from later releases but added wonderfully to the atmosphere of a Bayreuth Festival production. As a result these were provided by him, and have now been added to the recording as it was originally released (this first track now presented in Ambient Stereo), prior to the start of the full stereo recording. Andrew Rose
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notes from Wikipedia
Joseph Keilberth (April 19, 1908 – July 20, 1968) was a German conductor who specialized in opera. He started his career in the State Theatre of his native city, Karlsruhe. In 1940 he became director of the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague. Near the end of World War II he became principal conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle. In 1949 he became chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, formed mainly of Germans expelled from post-war Czechoslovakia under the Beneš decrees. He died in Munich in 1968 after collapsing while conducting Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde in exactly the same place as Felix Mottl had done in 1911. Keilberth made the first stereo recording of Wagner's Ring Cycle in 1955. Among his other recordings, his interpretations of Weber's Der Freischütz made in 1958 for EMI, and a 'live' set of Richard Strauss's Arabella (featuring Lisa Della Casa and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) made in 1963 for DG are still considered among the best versions. He conducted the TV-broadcast German-translation performance of The Barber of Seville, featuring Fritz Wunderlich, Hermann Prey, and Hans Hotter.
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