Maria Riccarda Wesseling (mezzo-soprano)
Kammerphilharmonie Graubünden, Marcus Bosch
by James Manheim
It's rare to see the name of a chamber orchestra on the cover of a Wagner recording, and despite some fine musicianship on this release by Switzerland's kammerphilharmonie graubünden, it's not totally clear what conductor Marcus Bosch and arranger Andreas N. Tarkmann were trying to accomplish. Tarkmann writes (the notes and song texts are in German and English) that &a short overview of the development of these adaptations...offers insight into the contemporary musical reception of Wagner's work,& but the arrangements are a miscellany of old, new, and, in the case of the Siegfried Idyll, not arranged at all. The prelude to Act III of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and the Waldweben segment of the opera Siegfried respond fairly well to the process of being fitted to an orchestral similar to the one used for the Siegfried Idyll, and the Fünf Gedichte von Mathilde Wesendonck, known as the Wesendonck-Lieder, had already been arranged for orchestra by conductor Felix Mottl and composer Hans Werner Henze before Tarkmann's smaller version. None of these would be completely out of place in a 19th century concert hall, and mezzo soprano Maria Riccarda Wesseling delivers a bewitching performance of the Wesendonck-Lieder, but none dates from Wagner's time or has much to say about the reception of Wagner's music. Rounding out the program are a pair of songs, pieces of Wagner juvenilia, one in more or less the Schubert style and the other following Meyerbeer (and in French, at that); they're interesting enough, but nothing is gained by arranging them for chamber orchestra. Nothing here is unpleasant to listen to, and the sound from Coviello Classics is a major plus, but nothing provides you with a compelling reason to hear it, either.