WAGNER Die Walküre / Karajan | Deutsche Grammophon

The second part of Herbert von Karajan’s Ring cycle with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Die Walküre, will be released on 7 August as part of the Original Source Series. Together with the already released Das Rheingold and the two forthcoming instalments of Wagner’s extraordinary tetralogy, the project marks the 150th anniversary of the cycle’s premiere. Having begun in 2023 with releases mastered from original 4-track tapes and expanded in 2024 to include original 8-track tapes, the Original Source Series now uses an original 2-track stereo master for the first time. 

Herbert von Karajan’s recording of Wagner’s Die Walküre features an outstanding cast, including Austrian star soprano Gundula Janowitz (Sieglinde), legendary bass-baritone Thomas Stewart (Wotan), Jon Vickers (Siegmund), and the dazzling Régine Crespin (Brünnhilde). It captivates with its expressive range and lyrical accents. Karajan skilfully allows his orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, to take a back seat in order to showcase the great singers. 

The audiophile vinyl series The Original Source presents outstanding recordings in an entirely new level of sound quality. For this purpose, the renowned Emil Berliner Studios have remastered and cut the original multi-track tapes in 100% analog quality (AAA), using technologies specially developed for the production of this series. The sonic differences compared to the original releases are substantial: greater clarity, more detail, and improvements across the frequency range, combined with reduced background noise, distortion, and compression, create an audiophile listening experience like never before.  

Released on 180g vinyl and presented in a 5-LP box set featuring the original covers and librettos, this limited and numbered edition also includes additional photographs as well as facsimiles of the recording logs and tape boxes. The edition is now available for pre-order.