Conductor, Charles Groves
Wagner
Overture and Venusberg Music (Tannhäuser)
Forest Murmurs (Siegfried)
Overture: The Mastersingers
Apart from the Tannhauser overture, all the music in this programme belongs to Wagner's maturity. The second act of Siegfried, from which the ' Forest Murmurs ' aretaken, was completed in 1857, when Wagner was forty-four, and it was at this pomt that he laid aside The Ring in order to realise two long-cherished ambitions, the operas Tristan and Isolde and The Mastersingers. In between these two works, he found time to revise the Venusberg music in his earlier opera Tannhauser for the Paris production of 1861; this revised version he later dovetailed on to the original overture, for concert performance. The overture begins with the Pilgrims' Hymn, later leading to Tannhauser's song in praise of Venus; the Venusberg music is a Bacchanale portraying the delights and temptations with which Venus tries to hold Tannhauser in thrall. Deryck Cooke