Helen’s recently got into Wagner, inspired by an old LP she picked up in a local charity shop (she half-seriously collects LPs under the misapprehension that in these mp3 days, LPs will become collectors’ favourites).
So tonight we’ve had bits of Tannhäuser rattling the windows while I’ve been racking my brains trying to remember the bit I first heard in John Boorman’s strange Arthurian romp, Excaliber – which turned out to be Siegfried’s Funeral March from Götterdammerung. Luckily it’s on the CD winging its way from Amazon (ancient LP ok as a curiosity, CD and burned mp3 for listening).
Which puts me in mind of my father’s (only) LP of Wagner highlights that he’d play occasionally when I was a kid, and of the remark attributed to Rossini that Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour
. To show Mr Rossini wrong I think we might have to visit Bayreuth and sit through the entire Ring…
LPs are not curiosities and LPs are not curiosities and I am under no misapprehension. When my shaped 7″ picture disc of the Frog Chorus buys you your place in the Home For Bewildered Old People you’ll want to thank me (if you still recognise me).
Helen Rickard
6 May 06 at 4:00 am