The Wagner 200 Recording Project

[ward1566]

Dear all,

To celebrate the bicentenary of Richard Wagner's birth, I am involved in a project to record 4-plus hours of Wagner's music that has never been recorded or rarely recorded. We will be recording more than 40 premieres, including songs, choruses, arias, orchestral works and piano pieces.

We're ready to record, but we need to raise $163,000 to make the 4-CD recording project a reality. This amount of money is way beyond what the recording project team can afford on its own, and so we have turned to the crowd funding website Kickstarter in order to try and raise the funds we need.

Here is the link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/672747621/richard-wagner-rarely-performed-and-rarely-recorde

If the link doesn't work then just go to Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com and enter 'Richard Wagner' in the search box. Ours is the only Richard Wagner project so it should be easy to find.

I can email you a flyer regarding the project. This gives a summary of what we are trying to achieve and how we can achieve it.

I and my project colleagues would be very grateful if you could help us fund this very important project, and perhaps spread the word about it to any friends, family and colleagues who you think might potentially be interested in it. As pledges start at $1, we are hoping that this is within most people's budget!

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the project, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Mark Ward

[Alan Howe]

I wish you well, BUT...

...and this is a purely personal view, I can honestly think of dozens of important works from the romantic era which deserve to be recorded ahead of these pieces and could be done at a fraction of the price ($40,000 per CD is pretty steep). So, and I must stress that this is purely my judgment, I couldn't possibly support this project financially in preference to others such as the Reinecke Cello Concerto and EM's planned Stanford/Milford CD. And there are going to be others - watch this space...

[TerraEpon]

Not to mention, the tiers are pretty ridiculous. You look at any video game, for instance, and it's usually $15 or $20 for a game (which is the same as what everyone else will pay when it's released). Now granted they are digital DLs and not CDs, but at LEAST the lossless files should be available for what one would expect to pay for a download in general. Though I really can't get behind anyone who talks about WAV and AIFF formats and not a mention of losslessly compressed files. It speaks of extreme ignorance.
I know KS is not technically a pre-order or whatnot, but a 'letter of appreciation' for a $25 pledge? That's way beyond anything I've seen for most projects.

[Mark Thomas]

I quite see that for dyed in the wool Wagnerians, this may be an exciting prospect, and I hope for their sake that they can raise the money. Although I don't in any way want to dampen the excitement of those who support this project, I'm afraid that I too have to line up with those of us who feel that this amount of investment would benefit the musical world much better if it was spent on recording four CDs of unsung master works.

[John H White]

I'm inclined to agree with both Mark and Alan on this one. If this project had been for the recording of a complete set of Franz Lachner's symphonies, I'd be glad to support it in whatever way I could.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I'm afraid I feel exactly the same. Do we really need more Wagner? And I LOVE Wagner.

[sdtom]

I quite see that for dyed in the wool Wagnerians, this may be an exciting prospect, and I hope for their sake that they can raise the money. Although I don't in any way want to dampen the excitement of those who support this project, I'm afraid that I too have to line up with those of us who feel that this amount of investment would benefit the musical world much better if it was spent on recording four CDs of unsung master works.

I quite agree with you Mark.
Tom

[eschiss1]

Well, these works are by definition unsung; I think what has people on edge is that they're by a better-known composer.

[John H White]

I think people like me tend to get excited at the prospect of hearing newly unearthed works by one of our favourite composers. Hence the existence of websites like Unheard Beethoven. What I might suggest to Mark Ward and his colleagues is to do what Eugene Minor did for Spohr's, then unpublished, Tenth Symphony: get the works concerned performed and privately recorded by a good amateur orchestra. With the power of the Internet, such recordings these days will not stay private for long and, within a few years, if those works are at all worth hearing, one or more of the record companies will have had them professionally recorded for public release.

[Alan Howe]

Well, these works are by definition unsung; I think what has people on edge is that they're by a better-known composer.

That doesn't bother me; the question is why I would want to support this project - the value of which might be obvious to Wagner completists, but isn't to me - rather than the recording of major works by a plethora of other romantic-era composers.

[eschiss1]

Apologies for my tone, and thanks for the clarification

[Alan Howe]

No apology necessary, Eric. Always good to hear from you.