The final concert of the Charlottesville Symphony’s 2018-19 season started slowly and finished in triumph. It was quite a journey. The Saturday, April 24th concerto opened with Wagner’s Prelude from “Parsifal.” This is a quiet, introspective work that uses silence as an important element. The orchestra played beautifully, achieving a shimmering quality in some passages. […]
Richard Wagner
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#ClassicsaDay #Bernsteinat100 Week 3
August 2018 is the centennial of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. Many classical radio stations, performance groups, and writers marked the occasion. And so did #ClassicsaDay. Bernstein was known as a composer, conductor, performer and an educator. Since #ClassicsaDay is primarily a music feed, I concentrated on the first two of those roles (and occasionally the third). […]
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Richard Wagner Concert Overtures Delightfully Charming
Jun Märkl and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra present a program of rarely-performed Wagner. And it’s a darned appealing program. The two concert overtures and the overture to König Enzio were all written before 1832. Wagner was in his teens, and his influences run close to the surface. The works sound like a mix of Beethoven […]
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Richard Wagner : The Last of the Titans – flawed look at a flawed man
Few historical figures have had as much written about them as Richard Wagner. Despite the library shelves groaning with books about the Bayreuth Master, Joachim Köhler has added to the hoard with almost 700 pages of text, splendidly translated by Stewart Spencer.Wagner receives little sympathy from Köhler, and little attention is paid to the music. […]
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Rienzi in Berlin
Richard Wagner’s third opera, Rienzi, is rarely produced today. It was disowned by the composer and banned forever from Bayreuth. Yet occasionally it is revived, normally in the much-reduced 2½ hour version that was authorized by the composer and had some success during his lifetime. Wagner enthusiasts have welcomed the new production by director Philipp […]
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Rienzi in Berlin
Richard Wagner’s third opera, Rienzi, is rarely produced today. It was disowned by the composer and banned forever from Bayreuth. Yet occasionally it is revived, normally in the much-reduced 2½ hour version that was authorized by the composer and had some success during his lifetime. Wagner enthusiasts have welcomed the new production by director Philipp […]
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Natural Music?
Tags: research, Richard Wagner“I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired by it.” – Richard Wagner The Bard of Bayuth may have been on to something. Last post I noted the Duke University study that indicated that music may be an […]