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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Lauritz Melchior Anthology Vol. 3
Klassik - Erschienen bei Danacord Records am 01.01.1987
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Onkelzshirt
Deutsche Musik - Erschienen bei Artistfy Music am 24.12.2021
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Haunted House Halloween
Giuseppe Verdi, Carl Orff, Richard Wagner
Klassik - Erschienen bei UME - Global Clearing House am 15.10.2020
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Richard Wagner - Overtüren
Philharmonische Vereinigung München, Das Große Klassik Orchester
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Wagner - Great Recordings
Klassik - Erschienen bei UME - Global Clearing House am 11.02.2021
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Christian Elsner: Urgedanken (Beethoven, Mahler, Wagner, Brahms)
Christian Elsner, Burkhard Kehring, Ludwig van Beethoven, Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms
Klassik - Erschienen bei Rondeau Production am 02.12.2022
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#Wagner
Klassik - Erschienen bei Paradise Classical am 09.08.2017
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Wagner: Tannhäuser Overture and Venusberg Music / The Flying Dutchman / The Ride of the Valkyries
Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra, Hans Knappertsbusch
Klassik - Erschienen bei OBX Records am 23.03.2015
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Wagner Classical Piano
Klassik - Erschienen bei Syrinx am 03.01.2018
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Bayreuth Festspiele 1952 - Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
Herbert von Karajan, Marta Mödl, Ramón Vinay
Oper - Erschienen bei Urania am 01.01.2002
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Wagner: Highlights from The Ring Cycle - Essential Music from Der Ring des Nibelungen with Ride of the Valkyries, Siegfried's Rhine Journey & More
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Hans Knappertsbusch
Oper - Erschienen bei Classical Expressions am 11.12.2013
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Wagner: Dreams
Klassik - Erschienen bei UME - Global Clearing House am 26.08.2020
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A Classical Dawn: Wagner
Klassik - Erschienen bei UME - Global Clearing House am 29.09.2022
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The Best Of The Classics Volume 1
Philharmonic Wind Orchestra, Marc Reift
Klassik - Erschienen bei Marcophon am 10.07.2014
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Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
Herbert von Karajan, Martha Modl, Ramón Vinay
Oper - Erschienen bei Urania am 05.02.2008
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Classique au cinéma
Klassik - Erschienen bei Syrinx am 15.02.2018
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The History of Film Music (100 Famous Songs)
Klassik - Erschienen bei Dream Collection am 14.07.2015
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Wagner: Siegfried
Oper - Erschienen bei Opus Arte am 24.08.2010
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