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
-
Wagner: Die Walkure
Astrid Varnay, Birgit Nilsson, Hans Hotter
Oper - Erschienen bei Urania am 11.08.2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
100 Must-Have Opera Spectaculars
Oper - Erschienen bei Cobra Entertainment LLC am 21.10.2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
So lang mein Herz noch schlägt
Deutsche Musik - Erschienen bei Artistfy Music am 10.03.2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Prelude to Act I), Parsifal, Götterdämmerung & Tristan und Isolde (Prelude & Liebestod)
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg
Klassik - Erschienen bei Soundmark Records am 24.02.2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
-
The Best of The Classics Volume 16
Philharmonic Wind Orchestra, Marc Reift
Klassik - Erschienen bei Marcophon am 11.07.2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Komm lass uns Fliegen
Deutsche Musik - Erschienen bei Artistfy Music am 11.08.2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Reminiscences: Romantic Works for Violin & Piano
Lisa Schatzman, Benjamin Engeli
Kammermusik - Erschienen bei Claves Records am 15.04.2014
24-Bit 88.2 kHz - Stereo -
Uri Caine Ensemble, Wagner
Klassik - Erschienen bei ClassicalPirosDigital am 30.11.2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Movies Classical Music
Klassik - Erschienen bei Syrinx am 19.11.2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Masters - Wagner
Klassik - Erschienen bei UME - Global Clearing House am 18.07.2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Grandes Epocas de la Música, Wagner, La Walkiria
Staatliche Symphonieorchester Wien, The NDR Symphony Orchestra
Klassik - Erschienen bei JamadaClassics am 23.11.2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Travel Classical Music
Klassik - Erschienen bei Armasi am 15.06.2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
-
Richard Wagner: The Ring (Part 2)
Orchestra Sinfonica e Coro della Radio Italiana, Wilhelm Furtwängler
Oper - Erschienen bei Big Eye am 01.01.2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Tannhäuser: Overture (Digitally Remastered)
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Libor Pešek
Oper - Erschienen bei EMG Classical am 23.10.2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
-
Ride of the Valkyries (Studio Recording)
Oper - Erschienen bei Artemisia am 27.03.2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Arias & Incidental Music
The Ljubljana Symphony Orchestra
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Stradivari Classics am 01.01.1992
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner (The classical collection)
Klassik - Erschienen bei Armasi am 12.07.2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Tristan und Isolde - Oper erzählt als Hörspiel mit Musik
Verschiedenes - Erschienen bei Amor Verlag GmbH am 07.01.2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo