There are four pieces associated with the death of Wagner, the contemporary composer whom Liszt admired above all others, despite the sometimes serious difficulties in their personal relationship. Liszt stayed with Wagner at the Palazzo Vendramin on the Grand Canal at the end of 1882, where he had a premonition that Wagner would die in Venice, and that, therefore, his body would be carried by a funeral gondola. (...) A little later, on the day that would have been Wagner’s seventieth birthday, Liszt composed the tiny elegy At Richard Wagner’s Grave, which he opens with the theme of Excelsior!, the first part of his choral work The Bells of Strasbourg Cathedral which Wagner had used to open Parsifal. Turning the compliment about, Liszt’s piece ends with a hushed recollection of the bell motif from Wagner’s opera. This piece, which also exists for organ or for string quartet and harp, remained unpublished for decades. (Howard)
Pf: Jenő Jandó
10 авг 2023
