• Tracks

This 31CD-box brings together all the operatic recordings that the German conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) made in the years from 1956 to 1993 for EMI Classics and Electrola (now Warner Classics). Aged 11, Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) heard a performance of Humperdinck's fairytale opera Hänsel und Gretel in his native Munich and, there and then, decided that he wanted to be the man in the orchestra pit who waved his arms and made things happen. It took him a while - war service as a radio operator and a spell as a prisoner of war delayed the inevitable - but by his late 20s he was conducting opera at Augsburg (starting with Hänsel und Gretel) and he had barely turned 30 when at Aachen he became the youngest Generalmusikdirektor in Germany. Opera recordings followed and his 1957 version of Richard Strauss's Capriccio is still regarded as the benchmark. Also in this box, along with more Strauss, perhaps the finest achievements of Sawallisch's other operatic hero, Wagner.