Wagner Liaisons
Matthias Kirschnereit (piano)
rec. 2024, Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal, Cologne, Germany
Berlin Classics 0303973BC [69]

Presenting Wagner’s little heard piano music intermingled with piano works by composers familiar and unfamiliar who have been influenced by or whose influence can be heard, consciously or not, is an excellent idea. Kirschnereit has selected six of Wagner’s original piano works and two transcriptions from his vocal and stage works for these liaisons, bringing together works that have links that might be related keys, matching character, temperamental association of objective thematic references. One can immediately see the connection in the opening pair, the Album Sonate and Bruckner’s Erinnerung quite apart from the matching key of A flat major; the simplicity of the opening phrases, albeit Chopin Nocturne-like in the Bruckner, and the grandeur of the writing as the works progress. Even some of the harmonic progressions, C major to E flat major and minor as well though Bruckner captures more of Wagner’s timbre than his harmonic style or melody. The Album Sonate does have a sonata structure but the title Fantaisie, which Wagner considered, suits the work  very well. It looks back to Beethoven on its first page but a surging passage over an A flat pedal note leads to pure Wagner at the ruhig wie vorher and, considering Wagner was not really a pianist, the virtuosic writing at the end of the immer bewegter and immer schneller passages is highly effective. That said I find myself more attracted to his miniatures; the next two choices could be by the same composer – but that composer is Mendelssohn not Wagner. Wagner’s Albumblatt für Ernst Benedikt Kietz was written in 1840, just five years after the Mendelssohn Song without words that is partnered with it. Both are in E major and despite the tempo difference there is a distinctly similar tone to both though Wagner would not perhaps have been happy with the comparison given his later disparaging view of Mendelssohn. There is no mistaking a later albumleaf, Ankunft bei den schwarzen Schwänen, in sight of the black swans, for any other composer; the rising opening phrases sound like they could be an extract from Tristan und Isolde which was only a couple of years behind him. One time Wagner fan Friedrich Nietzsche, who we also hear on this disc, was to change his mind about the composer in the mid 1880s due to Wagner’s anti-Semitism, declaring that the composer sickened him. Curiously it was Bizet who he upheld as all that was good and that the French composer had made him a better musician. Bizet was a dazzling pianist, as testified by no less a pianist than Franz Liszt but the piano didn’t interest him and his piano works are relatively thin on the ground. Thankfully he did write some lovely pieces and the Nocturne in D major is one such with its smooth melody over a flowing accompaniment and pre-echoes of Fauré.

Half of the Wagner pieces here are dedicated to or written for Mathilde Wesendonck, including the album Sonata that opens the recital but it is Mathilde’s 18 year old sister who received the dedication of the charming trifle that is Züricher Vielliebchen-Walzer. It is coupled with an extended scherzo by Joachim Raff that corresponds in temperamental manner though I have to confess that other than a genial light-heartedness in both pieces the elegantly lilting waltz and this moto perpetuo of a scherzo three times its length are quite different though I am glad to hear them both, the Raff especially. At the emotional heart of the recital is Schmerzen from the five poems for female voice, the Wesendonck Lieder, that Wagner wrote as he was working on Tristan und Isolde. Played here in the transcription by inveterate arranger August Stradal who transcribed all five songs as well as many other works by Wagner. Well done though the transcription is and well played by Kirschnereit this is a piece that really misses the glorious combination of voice and orchestra. Another transcription partners it, this time Duparc’s own arrangement of his short tone poème-nocturne Aux étoiles which sounds influenced by Wagner and captures some of the same mood though without Schmerzen’s aching loss.

Thematic connections are clear in the next two pieces, Wagner’s tiny musical letter for Mathilde Wesendonck and Rued Langgaard’s Stambogsblad –  family album leaf – which share a key and the same distinctive melodic shape. Langgaard was influenced by Wagner equally as much as Duparc was and this little gem of a piece seems to take Wagner’s tiny letter and expand on it, exploring in its short span the mood and harmonic feel of the Siegfried Idyll. Echoes of that continue in the tiny song without words In das Album der Fürstin Metternich coupled here with a real rarity in the form of Hans von Bülow’s innocence, a lyrical miniature that was described in a contemporary review as too hard to comprehend. One can understand that ears of contemporary audiences listen from a different perspective but surely even the little chromatic touches of the song without words and its occasional swirling arabesques were nothing new in 1879. A much lighter mood arrives with Wagner’s Polka, all 35 seconds of it. Definitely not for dancing thanks to its alternating between schnell and langsamer, fast and slower in the first few bars but its a fun piece. So lach doch mal, so laugh then, by Nietzsche suggests the same mood but this is a melancholy piece whose title points to a touch of bitterness. Two tributes complete the recital, one of Joseph Rubinstein’s transcriptions of sections of Der Ring des Nibelungen, his musical pictures as he called them and Liszt’s Am Grabe Richard Wagners. Joseph Rubinstein was a Russian pianist who became enamoured of Wagner’s music when he heard it in St Petersburg. He wrote to Wagner and eventually became his companion, sufficiently within the inner circle that he helped Cosima decorate the Christmas tree. His transcription of the music of Siegfried is highly effective and I would say matches Liszt’s treatment of Wagner’s operas. This is the second of two extracts he made of Siegfried – the other is Siegfried und der Waldvogel –  and I hope some enterprising pianist decides to record his Walküre, Götterämerung and Parsifal transcriptions. So far I can only see one recording of a Walküre transcription by Cyprien Katsaris (Sony SK58973). Liszt wrote four works in the shadow of Wagner’s death; two versions of la lugubre gondola, the brooding and intense R.W  Venezia and the work heard here which was written a little later and opens with a theme from Liszt’s The Bells of Strasbourg Cathedral with which Wagner had opened his opera Parsifal. Liszt’s piece is more reflective than the angst filled pieces he wrote immediately after the loss of Wagner.

I find Kirschnereit a pianist with a very sensitive approach to the widely contrasted moods and emotions on display as well as fully in tune with the technical demands. He has constructed a thoughtful and inventive programme that doesn’t rely on the same old pieces and his liaisons are well considered. I enjoyed the opportunity to hear a little of Wagner’s own piano music, excellently played and regular readers will know that I am always happy to discover works that would otherwise fall into the cracks of history.

Rob Challinor

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Contents
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Eine Sonate für das Album von Frau M.W. WWV.85 (1853)
Albumblatt für Ernst Benedikt Kietz WWV.64 (1840)
Ankunft bei den schwarzen Schwänen WWV.95 (1861)
Züricher Vielliebchen- Walzer WWV.88 (1854)
Notenbrief für Mathilde Wesendonck (1856)
In das Album der Fürstin Metternich WWV.94 (1861)
Polka WWV.84 (1853)
Richard Wagner arr. August Stradal (1860-1930)
Schmerzen No.4 from Wesendonck Lieder WWV.91 (1857-58)
Richard Wagner arr. Joseph Rubinstein (1847-1884)
Musikalische Bilder aus ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’
No.3 Siegfried und Brünnhilde – Siegfried Bild II (publ. 1875-78)
Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)
Erinnerung WAB.117 (1868)
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847)
Lied ohne Worte Op.38 No.3 presto e molto vivace (1835)
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Nocturne in D Major WD.55 (1868?)
Joachim Raff (1822-1882)
Scherzo in C Minor Op.3 (1881 version)
Henri Duparc (1848-1933)
Aux étoiles (1874 rev.1911)
Rued Langgaard (1893-1952)
Stambogsblad BVN.38 (1909)
Hans von Bülow (1830-1894)
Innocence (publ.1879)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
So lach doch mal (1862)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Am Grabe Richard Wagners S.135 (1883)