Wesendonck-Lieder

The Wesendonck Lieder is a song cycle by Richard Wagner on poems by Mathilde Wesendonck. The Five Poems for female voice and piano were written between 1857 and 1858 and were from the music publisher CF Peters with a typo in the last name published ( " Wesendonck ", see title page ).

According to Richard Wagner's every artist has the right to a muse. Such he found from 1852 in his Swiss exile in Zurich in Mathilde Wesendonck, whose husband Otto Wesendonck, a wealthy silk merchant, supported him financially and ideologically.

However, the ratio of the two stood on one side of Mathilde's husband and on the other side of Wagner's then wife, Minna, in the way, so a real love relationship could not develop. The relationship lasted until the abrupt end when Minna intercepted a letter from Wagner to Mathilde and a rupture provoked, especially in unfulfilled longing to each other.

This situation is reflected in Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde. Around this time he set the five poems of Mathilde. Two songs from this cycle called Wagner explicitly as studies of Tristan and Isolde ( " The Greenhouse" and "Dreams "). In fact, you can feel at each of the Wesendonck Lieder that resistant and yet unsatisfied desire permanent, which also accounts for the character of Tristan and Isolde. The arrangement of the songs is not clearly defined and updated by Wagner several times.

Wagner composed the Wesendonck Lieder for a female voice and piano. The song " Dreams" he orchestrated himself in December 1857 for solo violin and small orchestra. Felix Mottl created the instrumentation of the cycle for large orchestra, in which he mentioned the processing Wagner took over for "Dreams ". Versions for voice and chamber orchestra created in 1972 Vieri Tosatti, 1976 Hans Werner Henze, 2005 Andreas N. Tarkmann and 2007 Ronald grain filing.

The most common sequence of songs is:

Significant recordings

• Frida Leider - London Symphony Orchestra - John Barbirolli (1931 )
• Eileen Farrell - Leopold Stokowski Symphony Orchestra - Leopold Stokowski (1947 )
• Kirsten Flagstad - Bruno Walter ( Piano) - ( Live from March 23, 1952, New York)
• Christa Ludwig - Philharmonia Orchestra - Otto Klemperer (1962 )
• Hanne -Lore Kuhse - Gewandhaus Orchestra - Vaclav Neumann ( 1965)
• Yvonne Minton - London Symphony Orchestra - Pierre Boulez (1979 )
• Birgit Nilsson - London Symphony Orchestra - Colin Davis
• Jessye Norman - London Symphony Orchestra - Colin Davis ( 1975)
• Dagmar Peckova - Pražská komorní filharmonie - Jiri Belohlavek (1999)
• Nina Stemme - Vienna Philharmonic - Mariss Jansons ( Salzburg Festival 2012 )

Expenditure ( selection)

The issues appeared mostly with the write error " Wesendonck " (recte: " Wesendonck ").

• Poems by Mathilde Wesendonck. Set to Music by Richard Wagner. ( For voice and piano). With a postscript by Joachim Kaiser. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt 1961. ( Island Library 107 / B)
• Five Poems for female voice ( Wesendonck -Lieder ). German publishing house for music, Leipzig 1962. ( Facsimile edition )
• Five Songs on poems by Mathilde Wesendonck for a female voice and piano. Output for soprano. Edition Peters, Leipzig 1982.
• Five Songs for voice and organ, Edit. by Hans Peter Eisenmann. Edition Valhalla, Magdeburg 1994.