SiR HENRY WOOD and his SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
BELLA BAILLIE (Soprano)
WALTER WIDDOP (Tenor)
Relayed from the Queen's Hall
PART I
IN the spring of 1869, on the shore of Lake
Lucerne, was born Wagner's son, Siegfried, named after Wagner's great symbolical hero. Shortly afterwards, Siegfried's mother was greeted, on her birthday morning, with a speciallywrittcn and very beautiful piece of music, the Siegfried Idyll.
All who are familiar with Wagner's great
Trilogy, The Ring of the Nibelungs, will recognize in the Idyll many tunes from various parts of that work, tunes mostly connected with Siegfrid and Brünnhilde. The melody which chiefly dominates the Idyll (it persists in the strings in the first section) is the chief melody in the great love-duet.
The only tune used which does not occur in the Ring Trilogy is an old German cradle song.
TN Parsifal the evil magician, Klingsor, angry at his exclusion from the sacred Knighthood of the Holy Grail, has created an enchanted castle and garden. Here, with the help of Kundry, a beautiful woman, and her attendant Flower Maidens, he tempts the Knights. Parsifal is led there, and in this scene we hear their seductive music.
IN Wagner's great Music Drama, The Dusk of th3 Gods, Siegfried, the hero, has won his bride, Briinnhilde. He gives her the Ring as pledge of his love, and she gives him her war-horse, Grane.
Siegfried now descends into the valley, and though in the opera house the curtain falls, the music continues to picture his journey, and his horn is frequently heard. After a time, the music tells us that he has reached the deeply-flowing Rhine.