Richard Wagner - Wesendonck Lieder (1858)

Описание: Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor, best known for his operas—although his mature works are often referred to as music dramas.

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Wesendonck Lieder (1857-58)
Librettist : Mathilde Wesendonck (1828-1902)
Dedication: Ihrer Excellenz Frau Luisa Gräfin Erdody

1. Der Engel (1857, G major) (0:00)
2. Stehe still! (1858, C minor) 3:11
3. Im Treibhaus (1858, D minor) 7:00
4. Schmerzen (1857, E-flat major) 13:34
5. Träume (1857, A-flat major) 16:14

Anne Evans and the BBC National Orchestra conducted by Tadaaki Otaka
Night of the Proms 1994

The songs are settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of Richard Wagner's patrons. Wagner had become acquainted with Otto Wesendonck in Zürich, where he had fled on his escape from Saxony after the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849. For a time Wagner and his wife Minna lived together in the Asyl (German for Asylum in the sense of "sanctuary"), a small cottage on the Wesendonck estate. It is sometimes claimed that Wagner and Mathilde had a love affair; in any case, the situation and mutual infatuation certainly contributed to the intensity in the conception of Tristan und Isolde.

Wagner sold the settings to the publisher Schott in 1860 for 1000 francs. The first published version (1862) was titled Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme (Five poems for a female voice), and the first performance was given at the publisher's residence in Mainz, by the soprano Emilie Genast, accompanied by Hans von Bülow. No name was given for the author of the texts at the first publication; it was not publicly revealed until after Mathilde's death (1902). The present order of the songs appears for the first time in the published version, and this has raised doubts as to whether the sequence is a genuine song cycle, or should be regarded simply as a collection of individual pieces.