Richard Wagner
Overture to Die Meistersinger
Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg is the only music drama by him that is not steeped in a legendary or mystical scenario. It's also his only comic opera - but that's "comic" as opposed to "tragic" rather than with jokes; this is a humorous work rather than a funny one, and more artistic manifesto than anything else. Wagner's main characters - the wise singing-master Han Sachs, the impulsive singing-student Walther von Stolzing and the stuffy and conservative music-critic Sixtus Beckmesser - can all be read as Wagner's ideas on music. Listening to the work, they are the leitmotifs, the main ideas, the principal musical themes in the opera.
And so the overture opens with the Mastersingers themselves, marching, very imposing, grand and very Germanic. Walther's love theme then follows before it gives way to an irreverent parody of the Mastersinger's music - this is the student/apprentices and their high spirits.
Wagner soon cranks up the tension until the piece climaxes with a simultaneous combination of several of the most important themes (a wonderful moment in Wagner - a massive panoply of orchestral texture), ending with a grand statement of the Mastersingers processional opening.
Tradition, Wagner seems to be saying, is upheld by the Mastersingers and regenerated by individualists like Walther: the tenets of art evolve through the teaching of tradition.
Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin
"One supreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy-imagination that creates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality," wrote Wagner once. His imagination often created reality-how else to describe an opera like Lohengrin, this chivalric melodrama that pits spiritual purity against evil. Its three acts each begin with a prelude. The Prelude to Act I deals in Holy Spirit, that to Act II in evil, while Act III takes off with a whirlwind of wedding preparations.
This music is often heard before the curtain goes up in the opera house - and its wild pyrotechnical sonorities seem to express the rush of the heart, the joy of the wedding party. Extrovert excitement gives way to even less inhibited music before finally the curtain rises on the well known Bridal Chorus "Here Comes the Bride!" Today, the Bridal Chorus/Wedding march is the standard music played for the bride's entrance at the beginning of a wedding ceremony. In the opera, the chorus is sung after the ceremony by the women of the wedding party, as they accompany the heroine Elsa to the bridal chamber. By the way, the marriage between Elsa and Lohengrin is an almost immediate failure - so don't tell any brides, okay?
Bernard Clarke, RTÉ lyric fm
IF YOU LIKED THE WAGNER . . .
. . . you'll probably also enjoy these concerts in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's 2007/08 season, at the National Concert Hall or broadcast live on RTÉ lyric fm.
Wagner's much-loved Wesendonk-Lieder, settings of poems by his lover and patroness Mathilde Wesendonk, sung by Jane Dutton. With this, Weber's Euryanthe overture and Berlioz's stunningly original Symphonie fantastique, evoking the passions of a lovesick artist and his nightmarish descent into madness and oblivion in what Leonard Bernstein described as the first psychedelic musical trip.
To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2007/0907/nso.html
The Prelude and achingly ecstatic Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde with award-winning Wagner interpreter Miriam Murphy and another late romantic vision of death and transfiguration in Richard Strauss's Tod und Verklärung. To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2007/1019/nso.html
An entire evening of vocal and orchestral music from Wagner's Ring operatic cycle, including the Ride of the Valkyries - blazing colour and high drama, climaxing with the world on fire and the end of the gods. To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2008/0516/nso.html
The majestic sweep of Wagner's Rienzi Overture, more late German romanticism in Strauss's Don Juan (also performed on The Symphony Sessions) and ravishing Der Rosenkavalier Suite, along with Hugh Tinney playing Mendelssohn's brilliant G minor piano concerto. To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2007/0914/nso.html
Wagner's Flying Dutchman overture opens an evening of storm-tossed and darkly dramatic music with Liszt's Faust Symphony and Mozart's D minor piano concerto, played by Finghin Collins. To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2008/0118/nso.html
Wagner's noble and majestic Tannhäuser overture in a popular programme along with Bruch's beloved first violin concerto and Beethoven's evocative 'Pastoral' Symphony (at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, and on tour). To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2008/0307/nso.html