GÜNTER WAND - EDITION
THE LEGACY OF THE RADIO RECORDINGS Edited by Wolfgang Seifert
PROFIL Edition Günter Hänssler in cooperation with the ARD broadcasting stations in Germany
Günter Wand (1912-2002) left us dozens of gramophone records: complete symphonic cycles and impressive live recordings of his concerts with the NDR Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. The archetypical anti-star all his life and for that very reason under-appreciated, this conductor only attained international recognition in his old age as an unequalled interpreter of classical music. Accordingly, most of these multiple-award-winning benchmark recordings date from his later years.
All the more important, then, are Wand's copious radio recordings from earlier days. He was active in almost all the ARD public-service stations, the BBC and NHK Tokyo and there is ample musical evidence of his work. The aim of the posthumous Wand Edition is to use these studio recordings and broadcast concerts to explore aspects of his musical achievement not represented on the commercial recordings that were released during his lifetime. The best of the recordings in the various broadcasting archives, subjected to the most advanced digital techniques, may give the listener an idea of the extraordinary wide range of repertoire commanded by this great conductor.
Very few recordings survive from the early post-war years; most of the tapes were wiped after the broadcast and re-used. The 1950s and early 1960s saw a move to archiving quality recordings, and from the start, Günter Wand's performances fell into this category. If we examine these archive resources with the aim of filling gaps in the repertoire left by the discs that appeared in Wand's lifetime, the Classical era presents us with previously unpublished sacred works by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, including a number of great masses and the serenade music that Wand so loved. Then there is the French repertoire of the 19th and early 20th century, as essential to the posthumous edition as the contemporary music that meant so much to Günter Wand - compositions by Tadeusz Baird, Wolfgang Fortner, György Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, Carl Orff, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern and Bernd Alois Zimmermann.
The new Edition will also shed light on Günter Wand's fruitful collaboration with great artists of his time. It includes concertos with pianists such as Robert Casadesus, Rudolf Firkusny, Emil Gilels and Nikita Magaloff and violinists like Edith Peinemann and Ruggiero Ricci and vocal works with a galaxy of noted singers, among them Martina Arroyo, Margaret Marshall, Anny Schlemm, Werner Krenn and Anita Westhoff (who would later become Wand's second wife).
There has till now been no audio documentation of opera music director Wand. This too is now due to change with the appearance of this posthumous edition. His reputation is sure to be enhanced by the release of Wolfgang Fortner's opera Bluthochzeit, based on Federico Garcia Lorca's lyric tragedy “Blood Wedding“, a sensation at its 1957 premiere in the Cologne Opera House.
The rights for this edition have been all the more difficult (and complicated) to negotiate, the older the relevant recording is and the more musicians are involved. In some cases, the heirs of singers or instrumental soloists must be located and permission obtained. These essential preliminaries are still in progress. That means that we can as yet make no binding commitment to the final form of the Günter Wand Edition, except to say that 15 CDs are planned, to be released successively with a view to reissue in slipcase sets supported by detailed textual and audio documentation of the life and work of Günter Wand, under the overall supervision of editor and Wand biographer Wolfgang Seifert.
The first CD (of Mozart's Haffner Serenade) has already been released and three more are planned for 2004 (Vol. 2 with works by Messiaen, Webern and Fortner, Vol. 3 with Beethoven's “Emperor“ Concerto and soloist Emil Gilels, and Vol. 4 with a Stravinsky/Prokofiev programme and violinist Edith Peinemann).
Günter Wand: The complete Edition in January 2007
|
Special Edition: Günter Wand and Munich Philharmonic Orchestra,
|
- PROFIL MEDIEN GmbH -