Name: No. 1971 Subscription (Program A)
Start: 2022-12-03T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2022-12-04T00:00:00.000Z
Location: NHK Hall

Organization

Conductor

Fabio Luisi

Soprano

Mihoko Fujimura

Sopran

Orchestra

NHK Symphony Orchestra

No. 1971 Subscription (Program A)

Tokyo

Japan

NHK Hall

No. 1971 Subscription (Program A): Wesendonck Lieder, WWV 91 Wagner,Richard (+1 More)

Public

Private

Wesendonck Songs

Symphony No. 2 in C minor

Approved

Wesendonck Lieder (Wesendonck Songs) originated almost certainly from a forbidden love. These five songs for female voice and piano were composed by Wagner in 1857–1858 from poems by the wife of his patron, Mathilde Wesendonck with whom the composer is said to have an affair. During this period, he was also working on Tristan and Isolde, an epoch-making opera on a tragic story of forbidden love. The orchestrated version performed today was prepared by the Wagnerian conductor Felix Joseph Mottl in 1893.
The set opens tranquilly with Der Engel (The Angel) which tells about angels carrying a heart heavenward for deliverance when it bleeds in sorrow. The next Stehe still! (Be still!) pleads with wheel of time to stop whirling, then yearns for the taste of bliss in sweet oblivion. Im Treibhaus (In the Greenhouse) lets the poet have pity upon foreign plants as "we share the same fate," "although we are bathed in splendid light, our home is not here." Subtitled "Study for Tristan and Isolde," this song became a base for Prelude to Act 3 of the opera. In Schmerzen (Pains), we hear a trumpet fanfare glorifying the Sun when "it awakens like a victorious hero." But the pessimism prevails, stressing that "only pain brings about bliss." Träume (Dreams) fades away in quietness as "the dreams bloom and then sink into their grave." Another "Study for Tristan," this song would be expanded into the love duet of Act 2 of the opera.
Radical chromatic harmony, large-scale orchestra and the feeling of endlessness are some of the trademarks of Wagner' music. And the Austrian great symphonist Bruckner is one of those who were strongly influenced by this charisma. His quasi-religious worship was so deep that people around them, even Wagner himself, seemed to be perplexed. The two musicians first met in 1865 at the premiere of Tristan and Isolde. In 1873, Bruckner visited Wagner with his newly completed Symphony No. 2 and unfinished No. 3 in his hand, and No. 3 ended up being dedicated to the master.
Bruckner completed No. 2 in September 1872, but the premiere was canceled as performers judged it to be impossible to play. He revised it so the new version was publicly heard in 1873. Afterwards, he retouched it several times like he did with his other symphonies, whence comes his nickname "revision mania." The 1872 first version was first recorded only in 1991 in the critical edition by William Carragan which the International Bruckner Society published in 2005.
Contrary to the general view of revision as an act of "improvement," this first version is both precious and interesting because it was unperformed against Bruckner's will and it reveals to us his intact initial conception of the work preceding numerous modifications made in response to comments from others. It is overall (especially the finale) much longer than the revised versions, defining more clearly the composer's renowned spacious perspective and temporal sense. Its perfect example is the number of general pauses (where the whole orchestra is silenced momentarily) reduced in the later versions. This work's byname "Symphony of Pauses" is therefore truer of the original. Moreover, compared to the revised ones, the first version has the reversed inner movements with the Scherzo coming before the slow movement as with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (1824). And just like this Ninth, Bruckner's No. 2 begins with the strings' tremolo (tremulous effect), which would since be his usual trick to open his symphonies. After the wild Scherzo and the ecstatically mellifluous Adagio, the awe-inspiring C-minor finale attains the confident, radiant C-major ending.

English

No. 1971 Subscription (Program A) by Wagner, Richard, Bruckner, Fra (2022/2022), Dirigent Fabio Luisi, NHK Hall, Tokyo, Japan

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