Wagner

Donald Macleod explores five personality traits of Anton Bruckner, one of the strangest geniuses in music. Today, his veneration for the man he was wont to call ‘Master of all Masters’ – Richard Wagner.

Bruckner was nearly 40 when he first stepped inside a theatre, to see a performance of Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. It was a transformative experience, and from then on he immersed himself in Wagner’s work. A couple of years after that Damascene moment, around the time of the première of Tristan and Isolde, Bruckner had the opportunity of actually meeting his idol, and from then on he never missed a Wagner opening night. Some years later Bruckner dedicated his 3rd Symphony to Wagner – replete, in its original version, with Wagnerian references. The Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, friend and supporter of Brahms and implacable enemy of Wagner – and, by association, Bruckner – claimed that Bruckner had merely transplanted the style of Wagner’s music dramas into the realm of the symphony. But despite his frequent reminiscences of Wagner’s music, Bruckner’s voice as a composer is distinctive and unmistakable. The Adagio of his 7th Symphony, which Bruckner was working on when he heard the news of Wagner’s death, is at once his greatest tribute to the wizard of Bayreuth and one of his most profoundly original conceptions.

Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act 3 (‘Ehrt eure deutschen Meister’)
Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutschen Oper Berlin
Eugen Jochum, conductor

Bruckner: Symphony No 3 in D minor, WAB 103 (1876 version, ed. Nowak)
(2nd mvt, Adagio. Feierlich)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Georg Tintner, conductor

Bruckner: Christus factus est, WAB 11
Tenebrae
Nigel Short, director

Bruckner: Symphony No 7 in E, WAB 107 (original version, ed. Haas)
(2nd mvt, Adagio. Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam)
Berlin Philharmonic
Günter Wand, conductor

Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales