Szell: Wagner Orch Excerpts (r 1956, mono only) - Fontana 699.502 CL

Jacket: VG  /  Vinyl: VG  /  French pressing

This beautiful and rare LP from Fontana (699.502 CL, French pressing, blue label, mono – no stereo edition exists) features George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in a resplendent all-Wagner program, recorded in the spacious acoustics of Masonic Auditorium, Cleveland, on 2 November 1956. Though Szell and the Clevelanders would re-make all these works in stereo (at Severance Hall in December 1965), these earlier readings are no less fine, well demonstrating the enormous power and precision conductor and orchestra could marshall.

Their exact program is as follows:

Die Walküre

Ride of the Valkyries

Wotan's Farewell

Magic Fire Music

Siegfried

Forest Murmurs

Götterdämmerung

Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey

Siegfried's Funeral Music

Incidentally, the strking cover art was executed by Rougeot. The superlative liner notes on the reverse side of the jacket were written by Jean Hamon of l'Académie du Disque François and are printed in French only.