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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Albumblatt, WWV 94 (Arr. for Violin and Piano by August Wilhelmj)
Klassiek - Released by Azul Music on 24 feb. 2023
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Lohengrin: Act I: Prelude (Digitally Remastered)
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Libor Pešek
Opera - Released by EMG Classical on 16 okt. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Tristan Und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde): Prelude and Liebestod [Digitally Remastered]
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Evgueni Mravinski
Opera - Released by EMG Classical on 23 okt. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries (Alex Sauvage Remix)
House - Released by 9Ninerecords on 2 jul. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Classical Collection - Wagner - Obras maestras de la ópera
Klassiek - Released by ClassicalPirosDigital on 12 jun. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Autumnal Wagner
Klassiek - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 10 okt. 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: All Time Greatest Moments
Academy Of St. Christopher Orchestra
Klassiek - Released by Big Eye on 1 jan. 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Road trip music
Klassiek - Released by Paradise Classical on 14 jun. 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Wagner: Lohengrin Preludes (Live)
American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein
Klassiek - Released by American Symphony Orchestra on 8 mei 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Magic Fire Music & Wotan's Farewell - Chopin: Mazurkas, Op. 17; Preludes, Op. 28; Waltzes, Op. 64 - Canning: Fantasy On A Hymn Tune by Justin Morgan
Klassiek - Released by Everest Records on 29 jul. 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
In Flanders' Fields Vol. 40: Richard Wagner, Gösta Nystroem and August de Boeck
Nina Stemme, Jozef de Beenhouwer
Klassiek - Released by Phaedra on 3 sep. 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg (The Master-Singers of Nuremberg): Overture [Digitally Remastered]
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Bystrík Režucha
Opera - Released by EMG Classical on 16 okt. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Sigfried Idyll
Richard Wagner, Orchestra da camera Kandinskij, Aldo Lombardo conductor
Klassiek - Released by Kandinskij Gold on 22 okt. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Great Voices Of The Opera Vol. 11
Klassiek - Released by Documents on 1 sep. 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Richard Wagner Overtures
Radio Luxembourg Symphony Orchestra
Klassiek - Released by Black Pearl on 19 jan. 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Grandes Virtuosos de la Música: Wilhelm Furtwangler
Concertmuziek - Released by ns on 26 jul. 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Siegfried: Brünnhilde's awakening
Halle, Simon O'Neill, Rachel Nicholls
Opera - Released by Halle Concerts Society on 31 mei 2019
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Rienzi, Der Letzte Der Tribunen (Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes), WWV 49: Overture [Digitally Remastered]
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Bystrík Režucha
Opera - Released by EMG Classical on 23 okt. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Der fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman)
Opera - Released by Opera d'Oro on 14 mrt. 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo