Music director Jaap van Zweden has turned the DSO into a truly top-shelf orchestra, and lucky for people like me, Wagner is right in his -- and their -- wheelhouse. This group thrilled sophisticated audiences in Europe this spring in concerts that included the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde.
And these musicians were no less thrilling that Friday night when they opened their all-Wagner concert at the Meyerson with three of his preludes, and concluded with a sensational concert performance of the first act of his music-drama Die Walküre.
The first half of the program -- the preludes to the first and third acts of Lohengrin, and the prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg -- showed the wide range of emotions and drama in Wagner's music, and the wide range of the DSO's capabilities.
The ethereal spirituality of the opening bars of the Lohengrin prelude immediately prove that Wagner is not all about blaring brass and screaming sopranos and "kill da wabbit!" The opening is scored for four solo violins and the rest of the violins divided into four parts, and they build the instantly mesmerizing theme from a breathtaking pianissimo.
This is where Wagner perfected an orchestral technique that he used several more times, most notably in the prelude to Tristan und Isolde. The music starts very softly and slowly builds, with the melodies moving from section to section. Just over two-thirds of the way through, the music reaches its peak, with brass now blaring and (almost) the entire orchestra accompanying. From there, the music begins to fade, until at the end, it falls back to its pianissimo beginnings with just the divided violins.
I find it fascinating (and this is probably the key reason I keep coming back to this and other great music) that even though you may have heard a piece dozens, maybe hundreds of times, there's always something new to discover in it. When Jaap and the DSO got to that climax two-thirds of the way through the Lohengrin prelude, just as they hit that dramatic, blaring, fortissimo chord, I saw that the strings stopped playing! So what you get for a couple of bars is a straight wind band sound before the strings re-enter. Later, when I thought about what that little passage would have sounded like with full strings added in, I knew that Wagner of course was right. The brassy, forceful wind sound is perfect, but I had never noticed that little trick before.
The prelude to Act III of Lohengrin is the opposite of the first act prelude. It is loud and raucous. Wagner intended for this music to represent the wedding feast after the marriage of Lohengrin and Elsa, and you can tell that there's plenty of swigging of steins of good German beer, along with dancing, carousing and what-have-you. It's great fun.
In the opera, this prelude goes straight into the most famous music Wagner ever wrote -- the Bridal Chorus, or what everybody calls "Here Comes the Bride." It includes a chorus of villagers accompanying the happy couple to their wedding chamber, and it's got some nudge-nudge-wink-wink lyrics to go along with it. Apparently, Wagner was either appalled or amused (history is not sure which) when he heard that it had been used as the processional in a church wedding -- possibly the one between Princess Victoria of Britain (daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) and Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia in 1857. The lyrics, the dramatic origins of the piece, and the fact that Elsa and Lohengrin's marriage doesn't last 20 minutes (a blink of an eye in a Wagner opera) are why many churches frown on or even ban its use as a wedding march. But they'll let you use it in Vegas.
The Act III prelude, as performed by the DSO, stops just before the Bridal Chorus begins, while we're still at the party. Why spoil the fun?
The Prelude to Meistersinger is the closest thing to a traditional opera overture that Wagner wrote in the latter part of his career. It contains all of the opera's major musical themes masterfully woven together. It's interesting to note that, unlike almost any other opera overture by any composer, Wagner wrote this before he composed the opera itself. Amazingly, the themes survive intact over the course of the opera.
The end of this prelude uses the same music that ends the opera, and the last voices you'd hear in the opera during this very recognizable music are the chorus', singing the praises of the popular and avuncular Meistersinger Hans Sachs: "Heil, Sachs! Nürnbergs taurem Sachs!" (Hail to Sachs! Nuremberg's beloved Sachs!) As I listened to that part of the Prelude, at the point where the chorus would make this affectionate gesture in the opera, it occurred to me that the Meyerson audience that night could have easily stood up and sung: "Heil! Jaap! Dallas' taurem Jaap!"
Almost a year ago, I wrote on this blog about one of my favorite scenes in all of opera, Act I of Die Walküre. By the time he wrote this in the mid-1800s, Wagner had pretty much perfected his technique of using the orchestra to help tell the story being played out on the stage. The orchestra leads the drama's steady buildup from beginning to end. And using leitmotifs as themes, he develops the music much as a symphony composer would. That, plus its use of only three singers and no chorus, is why this work is perfectly suited for a concert performance.
With Wagner's expanded orchestra squarely on display, we can really see and hear how all the parts work together. And to top it off, the DSO brought in three top-notch singers:
The orchestra also was in top form, including all the "extra" instruments that Wagner employed to fill his musical palette, like the bass trumpet and of course the Wagner tubas, played by members of the DSO's French horn section along with some fine extra musicians.
At one point late in this hour-long piece, I got a chuckle from the reaction of this mostly symphony-going audience, many of whom apparently had not read the program notes and did not know the story. Aided by supertitles, it became obvious that the young couple onstage who were falling desperately in love, despite her unhappy marriage, were also realizing that they were long-lost twin brother and sister, which seemed only to fuel their ardor! At this realization, a murmur ran through the Meyerson crowd. So even after almost 150 years, Wagner continues to shock his audiences with his strange but captivating story.
It's hard to describe how all these great musicians made everything come together so spectacularly, except to say that the entire evening, at least for me, was nothing less than a religious experience!
The Act III prelude, as performed by the DSO, stops just before the Bridal Chorus begins, while we're still at the party. Why spoil the fun?
The Prelude to Meistersinger is the closest thing to a traditional opera overture that Wagner wrote in the latter part of his career. It contains all of the opera's major musical themes masterfully woven together. It's interesting to note that, unlike almost any other opera overture by any composer, Wagner wrote this before he composed the opera itself. Amazingly, the themes survive intact over the course of the opera.
The end of this prelude uses the same music that ends the opera, and the last voices you'd hear in the opera during this very recognizable music are the chorus', singing the praises of the popular and avuncular Meistersinger Hans Sachs: "Heil, Sachs! Nürnbergs taurem Sachs!" (Hail to Sachs! Nuremberg's beloved Sachs!) As I listened to that part of the Prelude, at the point where the chorus would make this affectionate gesture in the opera, it occurred to me that the Meyerson audience that night could have easily stood up and sung: "Heil! Jaap! Dallas' taurem Jaap!"
Almost a year ago, I wrote on this blog about one of my favorite scenes in all of opera, Act I of Die Walküre. By the time he wrote this in the mid-1800s, Wagner had pretty much perfected his technique of using the orchestra to help tell the story being played out on the stage. The orchestra leads the drama's steady buildup from beginning to end. And using leitmotifs as themes, he develops the music much as a symphony composer would. That, plus its use of only three singers and no chorus, is why this work is perfectly suited for a concert performance.
With Wagner's expanded orchestra squarely on display, we can really see and hear how all the parts work together. And to top it off, the DSO brought in three top-notch singers:
- Clifton Forbis as Siegmund, the misunderstood young man (he's actually the son of the god Wotan, although he doesn't know it), fleeing his enemies, who stumbles into a hut in a forest to escape a raging storm. Forbis has been around awhile, and has earned his reputation as an accomplished opera singer, including many Wagner roles. He did a remarkable job last year as Tristan with the Dallas Opera.
- Heidi Melton as Sieglinde, who's been forced into a loveless marriage and helps the stranger who's stumbled into her home. Melton is an up-and-coming dramatic soprano who has the chops to make it in the demanding world of Wagner opera. I saw her just two weeks before this, singing one of the three Norns in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Götterdämmerung, the last part of the Ring of the Nibelung.
- Eric Owens as Hunding, Sieglinde's brute of a hubby, who returns from battle only to find his enemy being sheltered by his wife. Owens is knockin' 'em dead around the world, not only in Wagner but in new works, as well. He turned in a masterful performance as the evil Alberich in that same Met production of the Ring.
The orchestra also was in top form, including all the "extra" instruments that Wagner employed to fill his musical palette, like the bass trumpet and of course the Wagner tubas, played by members of the DSO's French horn section along with some fine extra musicians.
At one point late in this hour-long piece, I got a chuckle from the reaction of this mostly symphony-going audience, many of whom apparently had not read the program notes and did not know the story. Aided by supertitles, it became obvious that the young couple onstage who were falling desperately in love, despite her unhappy marriage, were also realizing that they were long-lost twin brother and sister, which seemed only to fuel their ardor! At this realization, a murmur ran through the Meyerson crowd. So even after almost 150 years, Wagner continues to shock his audiences with his strange but captivating story.
It's hard to describe how all these great musicians made everything come together so spectacularly, except to say that the entire evening, at least for me, was nothing less than a religious experience!
