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Tag: Richard Wagner

Wagner’s Birthday Broadcast Vintage Recordings

Time to get out the crazy party hats. You know, the ones with the horns and feathers. May 22 is the birthday of Richard Wagner (1813-1883). This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll honor the composer with an handful of vintage recordings.

American baritone Lawrence Tibbett never actually sang the role of Wotan on stage, in the context of a “Ring” cycle. However, he did record “Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music,” magnificently, in 1934, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski.

Karl Muck was a casualty of anti-German sentiment during his time as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which, unfortunately, happened to coincide with the First World War. Be that as it may, he was held in the highest regard by fellow musicians and thought by many to be one of Wagner’s finest interpreters. We’ll hear a fascinating 1927 recording of the Transformation Music and the beginning of the Grail Scene from Act I of “Parsifal,” made at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth.

The recording employs the original bells designed by Wagner, which would be melted down by the Nazis for ammunition during the Second World War. So this will be a rare opportunity to experience the “Parsifal” Wagner actually knew. Muck was principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival since 1903. He conducted “Parsifal” at Bayreuth 14 times between 1901 and 1930.

Incidentally, it was on this date 150 years ago – Wagner’s 59th birthday – that the composer laid the cornerstone for his Bayreuth Festival Theater.

Finally, we’ll return to “Die Walküre” to wrap things up on a buoyant note with Siegmund and Sieglinde’s love music from Act I, which concludes with the lovers fleeing together into the welcoming spring. Nine months later, Sieglinde gives birth to Siegfried, the saga’s hero-without-fear. Lotte Lehmann strikes sparks with legendary Danish heldentenor Lauritz Melchoir in a 1935 recording with Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic.

The power of these performances remains undiminished by the passage of time. It’s a Wagner power hour on “Vintage Wagner,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Lotte Lehmann as Sieglinde and Lauritz Melchior as Siegmund

May 22, 2022
Wagner Birthday Siegfried WWFM Dragon Music

Happy birthday, Richard Wagner! Watch Siegfried slay Fafnir, and then tune in for more dragon music on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Illustration by Jason Seiler

May 22, 2021
Wagner’s Birthday A “Parsifal” Pilgrimage

Happy birthday, Richard Wagner!

It was sometime around 1983 or ’84 that my best buddy from high school and I determined to catch a screening of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “Parsifal” at Lehigh University. Neither of us knew much about the opera at that point, but we both loved the film “Excalibur” and were at the very least familiar with the mystical prelude Wagner had composed.

As my friend climbed into the car, he commented, “I think we’re in for a real treat. Listen to this!” Then he read to me the synopsis from Kobbé’s or Milton Cross or the equivalent. When he reached the part where Parsifal snatches Klingsor’s spear out of midair, destroying his power, we were both like, “Whoaaa.” We were ready for some serious action!

When we arrived, we learned that the film was being presented in an auditorium with a raked floor. I remember it was raked, because at some point during the showing, an empty bottle of spirits rolled down past our feet, clanking against the chair legs as it went.

The film was presented the old-fashioned way, on a projector, pre-digital, so periodically the tail leader would run out and the lights would have to be switched on, so that the reels could be changed. Along the way, there were also a few technical difficulties, significantly padding the film’s already four-hour-plus running time.

Anyway, it was excruciating – which is to say, we enjoyed ourselves mightily. There was so much to laugh at and groan through. The actor who played Klingsor was totally out of shape. When he raised his spear, he must have had an aneurysm or something, because instead of hurling it like a javelin, as described in Kobbé, he simply tumbled into a ravine. We were especially amused by the revelation toward the end that the entire production was supposed to have taken place inside a gigantic bust of Wagner.

Otherwise, Syberberg’s was a fairly straightforward interpretation, though curiously he chose to have actors stand in for the singers on the film’s soundtrack, a decision I can’t say made it any less silly. Oh yeah, there was also a passage, just before the “bust” revelation, that had knights proceeding down a long stone hallway, lined with swastika flags (???). Obviously, this was a work of genius.

By the time it finally ended, and someone switched on the lights for probably the sixth or seventh time, we staggered out of the building, wearing conspiratorial grins, only to discover a fog had rolled in. It was now ludicrously late. Driving back on Route 22 was like crossing the North Sea in a dragon boat.

When I arrived home, it was around 2:00 in the morning, and my mother was on pins and needles. What happened? What had we gotten up to? I shared a mercifully abridged account of our Wagnerian adventure. We were not dead in a ditch. Nor were we rotting in a police cell. We were merely watching “Parsifal.”

Why is this film, presented by Francis Ford Coppola, not available on DVD???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mic_EOGOTzE

May 22, 2020
Carl Tausig: Liszt’s Mischievous Genius

Carl Tausig was the supremely talented, though impish protégé of Franz Liszt. Some say that he was Liszt’s greatest pupil.

Tausig joined Liszt in Weimar at the age of 14. Energetic to a fault, he got up to all sorts of mischief, including sawing the ends off piano keys in order to make the instrument more challenging to play. He also hocked the original, unpublished manuscript of Liszt’s “A Faust Symphony,” an entire year’s labor, for a mere pittance. (Fortunately, Liszt was able to retrieve it.)

Tausig then joined Richard Wagner in his political exile in Switzerland, where the boy’s boisterous behavior caused the operatic master his own share of distress. There must have been something exceptionally endearing in his personality, since he was always quickly forgiven.

At a birthday celebration for the young pianist, Liszt predicted, with a twinkle in his eye, that Tausig would become either a great blockhead or a great master.

Regrettably, his career was cut short. He died of typhoid fever, aged only 29 years.

I’ll celebrate this mercurial pianist, born on this date in 1841, with recordings of some of his original music and transcriptions, this afternoon between 4 and 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Tausig, the merry prankster (left), and Wagner, looking vexed

November 4, 2019
Liszt’s Haunted Gondola A Halloween Music Tale

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN (DAY 22)

When visiting his son-in-law, Richard Wagner, at the Palazzo Vendramin on the Grand Canal of Venice, Franz Liszt had a premonition of Wagner’s death and of his coffin being borne away in a funeral gondola. Liszt composed the first version of “La lugubre gondola” in December of 1882. A second version followed in January. In February, Liszt’s vision was fulfilled: Wagner was dead, being borne down the canal in a coffin. Don’t mess with Franz Liszt.

Here are both versions of Liszt’s haunted barcarolle:

John Adams orchestrated the second of these and called it “The Black Gondola:”

October 22, 2019

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