Wagner Transformed

“Transformed” is right – with this intriguing album, producer J. Peter Schwalm and an all-star group of collaborators including Brian Eno and Eivind Aarset turn the master of Teutonic bombast into a purveyor of mildly glitchy electronic ambient music. Working with recordings originally made by the Liepaja Symphony Orchesta, Schwalm and his colleagues take snippets and longer passages from Richard Wagner’s operas Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, and (especially) Siegfrieds Tot, and turn them into quiet meditations that ease in and out of analog and digital environments; “Siegfried: Initium 4” is dominated by layers of acoustic piano, while on “Parsifal: Initium 4” the line between orchestral chords and synthesizer is nearly undetectable. All of it is quite beautiful and sure to befuddle genuine Wagner fans.