Concert Extracts and Arrangements
The Prelude and Liebestod is a concert version of the overture and Isolde's Act 3 aria, "Mild und leise". The arrangement was by Wagner himself, and it was first performed in 1862, several years before the premiere of the complete opera in 1865. The Liebestod can be performed either in a purely orchestral version, or with a soprano singing Isolde's vision of Tristan resurrected.
Wagner called the Prelude the "Liebestod" (Love-death) while Isolde's final aria "Mild und leise" he called the "Verklärung" (Transfiguration). In 1867 his father-in-law Franz Liszt made a piano transcription of "Mild und leise", which he called Liebestod (S.447); he prefaced his score with a four-bar motto from the Love Duet from Act II, which in the opera is sung to the words "sehnend verlangter Liebestod". Liszt's transcription became well-known throughout Europe well before Wagner's opera reached most places, and it is Liszt's title for the final scene that persists. The transcription was revised in 1875.
Another composer to rework material from Tristan was Emmanuel Chabrier in his humorous Souvenirs de Munich - quadrilles on themes from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. These were augmented and orchestrated by Markus Lehmann in 1988. Leopold Stokowski made a series of purely orchestral "Symphonic Syntheses" of Wagner's operas during his time as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, bringing to concert audiences of the 1920s and '30s music they might not otherwise have heard. He made a 'long version' of music from Tristan and Isolde which consisted mainly of the Act 1 Prelude, the Liebesnacht from Act 2 and the Liebestod from Act 3. A shorter version of music from the 2nd and 3rd Acts was called "Love Music from Tristan and Isolde". He made recordings of both versions on 78s and again on LP.
Other works based on the opera include:
- Clément Doucet's piano rags Isoldina and Wagneria.
- Hans Werner Henze's Tristan: Préludes für Klavier, Tonbänder un Orchester (1973);
- a 'symphonic compilation' Tristan und Isolde: an orchestral passion (1994) by Henk de Vlieger;
- a six-minute paraphrase by Enjott Schnieder, Der Minuten-Tristan (1996), originally written for 12 pianists at six pianos;
- the Nachtstück (1980–83) for viola and chamber orchestra by Volker David Kirchner
Read more about this topic: Tristan Und Isolde
Famous quotes containing the words concert and/or arrangements:
“... in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him.... We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they will live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs.... Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, to a past without meaning, and a future determined by others—into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one’s future.”
—Gerda Lerner (b. 1920)