Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. Indeed, though Wagner occasionally produced successful music written on a relatively modest scale, opera -- the bigger, the better -- was clearly his milieu, and his aesthetic is perhaps the most grandiose that Western music has ever known.
Early in his career, Wagner learned both the elements and the practical, political realities of his craft by writing a handful of operas which were unenthusiastically, even angrily, received. Beginning with Rienzi (1838-40) and The Flying Dutchman (1841), however, he enjoyed a string of successes that propelled him to immortality and changed the face of music. His monumental Ring cycle of four operas -- Das Rheingold (1853-54), Die Walküre (1854-56), Siegfried (1856-71) and Götterdämmerung (1869-74) -- remains the most ambitious and influential contribution by any composer to the opera literature. Tristan and Isolde (1857-59) is perhaps the most representative example of Wagner's musical style, which is characterized by a high degree of chromaticism, a restless, searching tonal instability, lush harmonies, and the association of specific musical elements (known as leitmotifs, the flexible manipulation of which is one of the hallmarks of Wagner's music) with certain characters and plot points. Wagner wrote text as well as music for all his operas, which he preferred to call "music dramas."
Wagner's life matched his music for sheer drama. Born in Leipzig on May 22, 1813, he began in the early 1830s to write prolifically on music and the arts in general; over his whole career, his music would to some degree serve to demonstrate his aesthetic theories. He often worked as a conductor in his early years; a conducting engagement took him to Riga, Latvia, in 1837, but he fled the country in the middle of the night two years later to elude creditors. Wagner as a young man had some sympathy with the revolutionary movements of the middle 19th century (and even the Ring cycle contains a distinct anti-materialist and vaguely socialist drift); in the Dresden uprisings of 1849 he apparently took up arms, and he had to leave Germany when the police restored order. Settling in Zurich, Switzerland, he wrote little for some years, but evolved the intellectual framework for his towering, mature masterpieces. Wagner returned to Germany in 1864 under the protection and patronage of King Ludwig II of Bavaria; it was in Bayreuth, near Munich, that he undertook the construction of an opera house (completed in 1876) built to his personal specifications and suited to the massive fusion of music, staging, text, and scene design that his later operas entailed. Bayreuth became something of a shrine for the fanatical Wagnerites who carried the torch after his death; it remains the goal of many a pilgrimage today. His attitude toward Jews was deeply ambivalent (he believed, mistakenly, that his stepfather was Jewish), but some of his writings contain anti-Semitic elements that have aroused considerable controversy among opera lovers, especially in view of Adolf Hitler's apparent predilection for the composer's music.
© Rovi Staff /TiVo
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Wagner: Siegfried
Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra, Sixten Ehrling
Opera - Released by Sterling on 4 mrt. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner - Overtures & Preludes
Klassiek - Released by Piros - Dienc on 1 jun. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Richard Wagner
Bruno Walter, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra, Richard Wagner
Klassiek - Released by In Vinyl We Trust on 16 sep. 2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hans Hotter Sings Wagner and Verdi
Opera - Released by Regis Records on 27 jan. 2014
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Richard Wagner: Inspiring Classics
Klassiek - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 18 okt. 2022
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GRANDI VOCI – MARIO DEL MONACO CANZONI, RARITA' E CURIOSITA' Una collana con registrazioni originali Decca e Deutsche Grammophon rimasterizzate con le tecniche più moderne che ne garantiscono eccellenza tecnica e artistica
Mario del Monaco, Richard Wagner, Georges Bizet
Klassiek - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 12 mrt. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
This is Wagner
Klassiek - Released by Classic Records on 9 mei 2017
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Trahisons
Orchestre de la Francophonie Canadienne, Jean-Philippe Tremblay
Klassiek - Released by Analekta on 27 jan. 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Götterdämmerung, Act III
Dimitri Mitropoulos, Astrid Varnay, Ramón Vinay
Klassiek - Released by Urania on 1 jan. 2005
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Stay at Home with Wagner
Klassiek - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 16 jan. 2021
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Themusicotheque: Il Grande Cinema
Orquesta Lírica de Barcelona, José María Damunt, Coral Lírica de Las Palmas
Originele soundtracks - Released by Piros Comercial Digital on 22 jan. 2014
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Wagner: Siegfried, Parsifal - Beethoven: Symphony No. 7
Klassiek - Released by Urania on 1 jan. 2000
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Wagner - Christmas Present
Klassiek - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 19 dec. 2020
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Wagner: Parsifal - Good Friday Spell & Symphonic Synthesis Act 3
Klassiek - Released by Everest Records on 1 aug. 1959
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The Art of Nikolai Golovanov: Wagner - Overtures and Selections from Operas
Klassiek - Released by Music Online on 7 dec. 2007
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Gut Schlafen mit Klassik
Klassiek - Released by Syrinx on 21 jan. 2018
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Wagner. Oberturas y Preludios
Rudolf Rendell, Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Klassiek - Released by Genius of Classical Music on 5 jul. 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Tristan und Isolde
Opera - Released by Opera d'Oro on 19 nov. 1996
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Wagner: Das Liebesmahl Der Apostel (The Love-Meal of the Apostles), WWV 69: Overture [Digitally Remastered]
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Estonian State Choir, Gennady Rozhdestvensky
Opera - Released by EMG Classical on 16 okt. 2015
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My morning with Wagner
Klassiek - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 5 sep. 2020
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Entry Of The Gods Into Valhalla (From The Opera Das Rheingold) Arr. For Piano By Louis Brassin
Richard Wagner, Elise Williams
Klassiek - Released by Pastel Records Canada on 15 jun. 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo