It has been two centuries since Richard Wagner was born, but the great German composer's music still reigns on the world's opera stages and concert halls.
“He was endowed with a great gift of poetry, powerful creation; his imagination was enormous, his initiative was strong, and his artistic prowess was magnificent,” Vladimir Stasov described the composer.
The grandeur of ideas and the boldness of their implementation put Wagner among the innovator composers whose music strongly influenced the development of the world's music culture. His music, full of a fascinating and mesmerizing power, discovered unbounded, earlier unseen vistas in arts. It is impossible to think about the destiny of opera as a genre without Wagner's opera reform based on a synthesis of arts. The composer considered that blending of theatre, poetic and musical elements was necessary to create a “music drama.” His influence was versatile and reached not only music theatre but expressive means as well. An innovator in the area of orchestration and harmony, Wagner achieved striking colour effects in his operas, thus expanding the potentialities of orchestra to the limit.
Franz Liszt wrote: “He came to an idea of the possibility and necessity of inseparable merging of poetry, music and acting, and realizing this merging on stage. Here, everything is inseparably linked with the organism of drama. Wagner's richest orchestra is an echo of the characters' souls, completing what we see and hear… He makes all means serve the paramount goal and establishes domination of poetic sense in opera. Everything is consistent in whole and in every detail, ensuing from one poetic thought.”
The genius of Wagner was universal. Endowed with a literary talent, the composer created librettos of his operas himself, and also wrote critical articles, in-depth philosophical and aesthetic treatises.
Wagner was famous not only as an opera composer, but also as a remarkable conductor and virtuoso in running an orchestra. Accomplishing a real revolution in the art of conducting, he, along with Hector Berlioz, became a founder of modern conducting.
Thanks to his versatility combined with his indefatigable energy, the composer attracted general attention throughout his lifetime, and the arguments about his works have not subsides to this day.
This release dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth features widely popular overtures and entr'actes from Wagner's operas, which became part of the repertoire of such outstanding conductors as Evgeni Svetlanov, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, David Oistrakh, Evgeni Mravinsky and others.
