The Third Annual Positive Feedback Online's Writers' Choice Awards - for 2006
Melba Recordings (Australia) for Das Rheingold and Die Walküre: Kudos to this recording company from "down under" for undertaking such an ambitious project! Few musical compositions require such titanic forces to perform and record like a Wagner Ring opera. Many hours of singing, huge forces in the opera pit …a truly fiendish project to pull off successfully! However, Melba rose to the occasion with the first ever Ring Cycle recorded on SACD. Decca made history in the late 1950s and early 1960s and Melba is making history in 2006 and 2007 with the release of these four monster operas. Oh, how do the first two sound? Outstanding, with a tremendous sense of space, detail, balance between singers and the pit. Excellent singers to perform some of the most emotionally charged and physically demanding music ever written. The last two operas will be released in the first half of 2007 (if the two remaining operas are as good as the first two, look for a repeat nomination for 2007!)
Read Mark Wagner's Review of Die Walküre
Read about the 2006 PFO Writer's Choice Awards