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Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde Program Notes by Phillip Huscher

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Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde Program Notes by Phillip Huscher program notes by phillip huscher richard wagner Born May 22, 1813; Leipzig, Germany Died February 13, 1883; Venice, Italy Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde composed approximate performance time cso recordings October 1857–August 1859 (opera) 18 minutes 1947. Artur Rodzinski conducting. RCA 1958. Fritz Reiner conducting. CSO (From the first cso performances first performance Archives, vol. 3: To Honor the 100th Anniversary of December 18 and 19, 1891, Auditorium Theatre. March 12, 1859; Prague, Bohemia (prelude only) the Birth of Fritz Reiner) Theodore Thomas conducting June 10, 1865; Munich, Germany (opera) 1966. Rafael Kubelík conducting. CSO (From the July 5, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Rudolph Archives, vol. 16: A Tribute to Rafael Kubelík II) instrumentation Ganz conducting three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english 1976. Sir Georg Solti conducting. London (video) horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, three 1977. Sir Georg Solti conducting. London bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, harp, strings 1994. Daniel Barenboim conducting. Teldec On January 25, 1860, in Paris, Richard would become its regular concert companion, the Liebestod—the Wagner conducted a concert of his own final scene of the opera—before the Munich premiere. (Theodore music, including the prelude to Tristan and Thomas conducted the first U.S. performance of the Prelude and Isolde, for an audience that contained Liebestod—or finale, as it was called then—on February 10, 1866, in Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Gounod, and the poet New York.) Baudelaire, who often is said to have Never before, and arguably not since, have so few pages of music launched modern literature just as his had such impact. As a measure of their force, consider that even a contemporary Richard Wagner set the stage fellow pioneer like Berlioz, whose own Symphonie fantastique had for modern music with the first notes of unsettled the musical world thirty years earlier, could not come Tristan and Isolde. to terms with this daring and unconventional work. Berlioz wrote Baudelaire was captivated by Wagner’s music that evening and of “. a slow piece, beginning pianissimo, rising gradually to fortis- wrote to the composer “of being engulfed, overcome, [with] a really simo, and then subsiding into the quiet of the opening, with no other voluptuous sensual pleasure, like rising into the air or being rocked theme than a sort of chromatic moan, but full of dissonances.” on the sea.” The press, on the other hand, had a field day ridiculing His words are as unfeeling, cautious, and noncommittal as those music that was obviously well beyond their understanding, and even of many a critic writing today about tough and unusual new music. Berlioz, whose perception and brilliance as a critic nearly rivaled his In 1860, Tristan and Isolde, of course, was tough and unusual new vision and genius as a composer, had to admit that he could make music, and, although it has lost its shock appeal in the past 156 years, no sense whatever of the prelude. it still carries an emotional force virtually unmatched in music. The Paris concert, like those in Zurich in 1853, and others still to Berlioz was right to point out the chromaticism and dissonance, come in Vienna, Munich, and London, was devised to raise money for Wagner’s treatment of both was startlingly new. The now-fa- and consciousness—to further the Wagner cause. Wagner willingly mous “Tristan chord”—the first harmony in the prelude—with its played not only the overtures and preludes to his operas, but also heart-rending unresolved dissonance, instantly opened new har- salient excerpts (without voices) from the music dramas themselves monic horizons for composers, not as an isolated event—similar in order to pay his bills. Even as late as 1877—Wagner was sixty-four chords can be found in Mozart, Liszt, and even in music by Bülow— and famous beyond measure for Tristan and his new Ring cycle— but in the way it unlocks a web of harmonic tensions that will not, in he agreed to conduct eight entire evenings of fragments from his the complete opera, be resolved for hours, not in fact until the final operas, recognizing that even musical gods can be forced to file cadences of the Liebestod. That music—sung in the opera by Isolde, Chapter Eleven. but often played in the concert hall without a soprano—picks up and completes the interrupted Liebesnacht, or “night of love” from he performance history of the prelude to Tristan and Isolde the second act of the opera; now Tristan lies dead in Isolde’s arms. in concert is older than the opera itself. The prelude was The Liebestod brings not only resolution but, in Wagner’s words, T first performed in Prague in March 1859—more than six transfiguration. years before the premiere of the opera—under the baton of Hans von Bülow, who had already dedicated much of his talent and energy to Wagner and would soon donate his wife Cosima as well. Phillip Huscher has been the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Wagner also conducted the prelude, along with the music that Orchestra since 1987..
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