Wagner: Die Walküre (Vinyl) – Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan’s recording of Wagner’s Die Walküre features an outstanding cast, including the phenomenal soprano Gundula Janowitz (Sieglinde), bass-baritone Thomas Stewart (Wotan), Jon Vickers (Siegmund), and Régine Crespin as Brünnhilde. Celebrated, among other things, for its lyrical nuances, Wagner’s work unfolds in this recording with tremendous dramatic power. Karajan masterfully allows the Berlin Philharmonic to recede into the background, giving center stage to the exceptional singers. As the classical music magazine Gramophone aptly noted, even half a century after its release, the recording “still holds surprises.”

This extraordinary recording project is now being released in the “Original Source Series” in the highest audiophile sound quality. For the first time, the series uses the original stereo master tape — a two-track master tape — as its source.

Released on 180g vinyl and as a deluxe 5LP box set edition, featuring the original cover artwork and liner notes, including the complete libretto. The box sets are limited and numbered, accompanied by additional photographs and facsimiles of the recording logs and tape boxes. Karajan’s epoch-making Walküre, celebrating 150 years of Der Ring des Nibelungen, presented in a definitive audiophile edition.

The Original Source vinyl series presents outstanding recordings from the 1960s and 1970s in an entirely new level of sound quality. To achieve this, the renowned Emil Berliner Studios remastered and cut the original two-, four-, and eight-track tapes using technologies developed specifically for the series, maintaining 100% analog quality (AAA). The sonic differences compared to the original releases are substantial: greater clarity, enhanced detail, and improvements in frequency response, combined with reduced surface noise, distortion, and compression, create an audiophile listening experience unlike ever before.