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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Grand Concerts (Classical Music Masters)
Klassik - Erschienen bei Il Loggione Records am 23.03.2018
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Overtures & Orchestral Preludes
The London Festival Orchestra, Philharmonia Slavonica, Münchner Symphonie-Orchester
Klassik - Erschienen bei JamadaDigital am 19.12.2014
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Relaxed Thanksgiving with Wagner
Klassik - Erschienen bei UME - Global Clearing House am 21.11.2020
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Der Malerweg in der Sächsischen Schweiz
Alexander Zschiedrich, Gerda Zschiedrich, Carl Maria von Weber, Richard Wagner
Hörbücher - Erschienen bei Unterlauf & Zschiedrich Hörbuchverlag am 23.07.2008
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Klemperer Conducts Wagner
The Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer
Klassik - Erschienen bei Radio Tower Records am 24.10.2014
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Wagner, Richard: Parsifal
Klassik - Erschienen bei Burning Fire am 26.02.2008
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Das Liebesverbot
Klassik - Erschienen bei Documents am 09.01.2008
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In Concert with the University of Illinois Symphonic Band - The Begian Years, Vol. XIII
The University of Illinois Symphonic Band
Klassik - Erschienen bei Tresona am 01.01.2000
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Classical Concerts
Klassik - Erschienen bei Il Loggione Records am 08.11.2019
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Krach für euch da draussen
Deutsche Musik - Erschienen bei Artistfy Music am 23.10.2020
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Selección Clásicos - Wagner, Berlioz, Liszt
Klassik - Erschienen bei ClassicalPirosDigital am 18.06.2015
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Flight To Greece
World Music - Erschienen bei WAGNER - LLK Studios am 24.09.2021
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Margarida
World Music - Erschienen bei WAGNER - LLK Studios am 15.10.2021
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Glorreiche Zeit
Deutsche Musik - Erschienen bei Artistfy Music am 16.04.2021
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Dioses de la Música - Wagner
Klassik - Erschienen bei Piros Comercial Digital am 25.05.2015
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Helden meiner Jugend
Deutsche Musik - Erschienen bei Artistfy Music am 24.05.2019
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Wagner - Overtures & Preludes
Symphony Orchestra of Radio Berlin
Klassik - Erschienen bei ClassicalPirosDigital am 08.07.2015
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All of you
Hip-Hop/Rap - Erschienen bei WAGNER - LLK Studios am 10.09.2021
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Pray Too Deep
Hip-Hop/Rap - Erschienen bei WAGNER - LLK Studios am 01.10.2021
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Opus Wagner
Klassik - Erschienen bei UME - Global Clearing House am 12.09.2020
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