In trying to find this record on Spotify, the search for the title that has the name of the famous conductor Von Karajan in it, leads me directly to recordings by Knappertsbusch. Very helpful, Spotify.
What I wrote yesterday about me not wanting to have collections of fragments of operas goes even stronger for Wagner. His operas are built as one long piece. There are ways to split it, but the music goes on. It goes on for sometimes five hours. So to split these fragments off feels even more like an atrocity.
At the same time if you didn’t know that, you can see the fragments on this record as symphonic poems. They have a story to tell, and they do not adhere to the usual symphonic sonata form of exposition – development – recapitulation. So, they’re still enjoyable.
Should you ever listen to a Wagner opera online in any way, make sure you listen to the piece without breaks: since streaming services rely on a file based approach, this sometimes can be a bit of a challenge. What is going on with that?
The redbook standard (describing the CD) says the titles on a cd should be able to connect without pauses. So sometimes there is no silence between separate titles. This is by design, to make it possible for very long tracks like this to still be heard without those annoying silences.
However, in moving to a file based streaming service, this requirement is sometimes dropped. Cheaper interfaces suffer most from this. This is not the way it should be, and if you find that to be the case when you try listening, consider upgrading the set. It is not commonly advertised thought, so looking for a good set might be challenging.
It is not opera of classical music that suffers from this. Also jazz and dj sets benefit from gapless play.