WAGNER AT HIS MOST SYMPHONIC

Repertoire

RICHARD WAGNER: Lohengrin. Prelude, Act I.
Tannhäuser, oberture
Tristan und Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod
Siegfried: Forest murmurs from Act III
Götterdämmerung: Siegfried’s Rhine journey
Siegfried’s death and funeral music
The Master-Singers of Nuremberg, prelude.

Artists

Kazushi Ono, conductor

Program

The symphonic fragments of Wagner’s operas are true masterpieces, a world of nuances, colours, emotions and passion; pages whose popularity has in no way diminished their energy. The wordless Wagner covers it all: from uncontrolled strength to the sweetest tenderness.The sound of the Wagnerian orchestra is unique, recognisable, and different. Wagner sounds like Wagner, and can’t be compared with anything else. In the era he lived in, orchestras were mid-sized and started to expand by incorporating new instruments. But he «needed» more, and more… and maybe more still. Although Berlioz opened the way for expanding the orchestra, Wagner took it further and sought to find a balance between the instruments, the singers and the stage space. He was the first to propose that the opera orchestra played in a hidden, sunken space between the stage and the seats, known precisely as the “orchestra pit”, to avoid blocking the performance of the singers and, at the same time, not lose an iota of the colour he had achieved by expanding the orchestra to up to a hundred musicians.