If you look at this YouTube upload of the overture to Meistersinger, you can enjoy a sad Internet story: Uploader writes, “Please restrict your comments to Wagner’s music. Nothing hateful will be tolerated. ;)” Scroll down a little and you see, “Comments are disabled for this video.” Sad!
Was pretty shocked to go to the clip and see that it was Solti and the Vienna Phil. From the plea to the mercy of trolls and the shut-down comments, I had assumed this would have been something like Karajan conducting in occupied Paris or some other invitation to fly the virtue flag. Hard to figure out what the bait was here. Solti? Pretty unlikely. The VPO? It gets attacked from time to time (not without reason) but not much steam seems to get built up there…Wagner? I guess he’s the most likely bait. The man’s been dead for 135 years and his personality still calls the hounds to the hunt. Or maybe it’s who liked him. Probably reasonable to call someone on who he hangs out with while he’s alive. Not so much so for who likes him after he’s dead. What a world…
Nice performance (in the Solti style) by the way. Crisp and emphatic and smoothed over a little by the VPO sound. Not the best ever but very nice. It takes a special person to attack this much C major.