Wagner: Faust Overtüre
Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder with Christiane Karg mezzosoprano
Bruckner: 3rd symphony, 1st version 1873
Bruckner’s symphonies in the original sound adoption
In the autumn of 1872, Anton Bruckner began work on his Symphony No. 3 in D minor. Following its completion the following year, he offered to dedicate it, plus the Symphony No. 2 in C minor, to his idol, Richard Wagner, during a visit to Bayreuth. Wagner chose the ‘Third’ which was then also “dedicated to him with the deepest of reverence” . However, the “1873 version” is, at most, a “Wagner symphony “. It still contains all the allusions to, reminiscences of and quotations from the works of its dedicatee, most of which were later erased, who was thus able to recognise himself in the symphonic reflection of his work that Bruckner supposedly reproached him with, but failed to recognise that what was taking place here was a deliberate appropriation of specific elements of his musical language by his admirer. Bruckner’s musical homage to the “beloved immortal master” is combined with two of Wagner’s compositions: the Faust Overture in D minor, from which Bruckner took a motif that he used in the final movement of his String Quintet in F major, composed in 1878/79, and the settings of five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck that became known as the “Wesendonck Lieder” , two of which Wagner explicitly described, Im Treibhaus and Träume, as a “study for ‘Tristan und Isolde'” , an opera for whose premiere Bruckner travelled to Munich in 1865. An illustrious group of debutants, including the renowned soprano Christiane Karg, the internationally acclaimed original sound orchestra, Anima Eterna Brugge, and the star conductor, Pablo Heras-Casado, listen to the interplay of appropriation and dedication, making it possible to hear what connected admirers and admirers, but also what separated them.
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