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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2017杭州爱乐樂團-樂季音樂會(四)
Klassik - Erschienen bei Classical Music am 09.11.2016
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Wedding March , Hochzeitsmarsch
Pop - Erschienen bei Q Tracks am 26.06.2013
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Wagner Autumnal Study Vibes
Klassik - Erschienen bei UME - Global Clearing House am 24.10.2020
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Richard Wagner: The Ring (Part 1)
Orchestra Sinfonica e Coro della Radio Italiana, Wilhelm Furtwängler
Oper - Erschienen bei Big Eye am 01.01.2008
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Richard Wagner, Los Grandes de la Música Clásica
Weiner Philarmoniker, Orchester der Bayreuther Fetspiele
Klassik - Erschienen bei Piros - Lucas am 02.07.2015
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Wagner, Richard: Gotterdammerung
Klassik - Erschienen bei Burning Fire am 26.02.2008
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FELL IN LUV
World Music - Erschienen bei WAGNER - LLK Studios am 20.08.2021
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Aus eigener Feder
Deutsche Musik - Erschienen bei Artistfy Music am 01.02.2019
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Pressure
World Music - Erschienen bei WAGNER - LLK Studios am 05.09.2021
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Best Opera Singers, Vol. III
Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, Lotte Lehmann, Michael Bohnen
Oper - Erschienen bei SB Clasic am 22.11.2002
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At the End of the Rainbow
Pop - Erschienen bei SalvoRecords am 25.08.2014
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Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Wagner) - Excerpts recorded ‘live’ at a performance given at the Unter der Linden Theatre, Berlin, on 22nd May, 1928
Friedrich Schorr as ‘Hans Sachs’
Oper - Erschienen bei The Digital Gramophone am 13.12.2013
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Tristan und Isolde - Werkschau Bayreuth 2005
Hörbücher - Erschienen bei audiotransit am 16.08.2013
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#Movies
Klassik - Erschienen bei Paradise Classical am 05.08.2017
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Heroic Classical Music
Klassik - Erschienen bei Paradise Classical am 20.06.2017
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Klassik - Erschienen bei Paradise Classical am 09.06.2017
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Adventure Classical Music
Klassik - Erschienen bei Classic Records am 19.05.2017
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Melancholic Classical Music
Klassik - Erschienen bei Classic Records am 23.02.2017
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Relaxing Piano
Klassik - Erschienen bei Music Ware am 25.04.2016
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Bridal Wedding March
Klassik - Erschienen bei The Playlist Spot am 16.06.2015
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