Overtures & Preludes
Barenboim is an excellent Wagner conductor, and it's a pity his ongoing series of Wagner operas is often forced to make do with less than splendid voices. All the more reason, then, to enjoy this excellent disc of overtures and preludes, all of which are played to the hilt by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and recorded in sound of superb amplitude. There are many collections of this type available, many of them very fine, and even more of them very dull. Barenboim plays the music with the necessary flexibility of tempo, but at the same time never turns it into a lecture on Schopenhaurian philosophy. It's a good listen.--David Hurwitz