In anticipation of Opera Australia’s ‘Ring Cycle’, pianist Alex Raineri and Wagner scholar and author Peter Bassett present a compelling program which explores the world of Richard Wagner through his letters and music, tracing his connections with just a few of his contemporaries and followers.
WAGNER In das Album der Fürstin M
MENDELSSOHN Variations sérieuses, Op 54
LISZT Années de Pèlerinage, Deuxième Année – Italie. Sposalizio
WAGNER Prelude, Tristan und Isolde
WAGNER/LISZT Isolde’s Liebestod
BERG Piano Sonata, Op.1
SCRIABIN Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp, Op. 30
Mendelssohn and Wagner had occasional contact in the 1840s, and much of Wagner’s music was paraphrased by Liszt (himself a source of harmonic inspiration) whose daughter Cosima became Wagner’s second wife. The sonatas by Berg and Scriabin bear striking harmonic homage to Tristan und Isolde from which the famous Prelude and Liebestod are featured.
Wagner transformed the way music was composed for the theatre, and his influence extended well beyond the stage. Born during the Napoleonic wars and within twenty years of the French Revolution, he was conscious of the great social and intellectual changes taking place in Europe, and he associated himself with them. His mature works drew on the interaction of ideas from widely divergent sources, and this cross-fertilisation imbued his operas with particular dramatic richness and energy. Like Beethoven before him, Wagner left a legacy that evolved in different directions, and while some of his successors set out to resist the gravitational pull of his musical ideas and personality, none could ignore it.
Alex Raineri – Piano
Peter Bassett – Readings from Letters, Journals, Memoirs and Poetry
This is a Benefit Soirée for Hearts for Africa and includes an invitation to stay and mingle over High Tea