Wagner: The Operas;

October 21, 2012 marks Sir Georg Solti's centenary and Decca is celebrating this with several important reissues.

Sir Georg was an exclusive Decca artist for 50 years.

In 1947 he signed his first contract with Decca - as a pianist and that same year he made his first record as a conductor (with the Zurich Tonhalle in Beethovens Egmont Overture). His last public concerts took place just a few weeks before his death in 1997 and were with the Zurich Tonhalle.

Solti was a musician with extraordinarily wide musical interests and sympathies and he was without doubt one of the most important opera conductors of the second half of the twentieth century. His legacy of recordings is dominated by opera and his recording of Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen - the first ever complete studio recording - has been described as the greatest recording of all time [BBC Music Magazine, January 2012]

CD 1-2
Der fliegende Holländer

CD 3-6
Lohengrin

CD 7-10
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1975 recording, Vienna)

CD 11-14
Parsifal

Der Ring des Nibelungen
CD 15-16
Das Rheingold

CD 17-20
Die Walküre

CD 21-24
Siegfried

CD 25-28
Götterdämmerung

CD 29-31
Tannhäuser

CD 32-35
Tristan und Isolde

CD 36 - bonus CD
Tristan und Isolde Rehearsal - The Birth of an Opera
first released as a bonus LP with the original LP set of the opera

Der Ring des Nibelungen - orchestral excerpts
1982 digital recording