Of these, I was particularly happy to make the acquaintance of the Gounod Romeo et Juliette Reverie, a tender, nocturne-like idyll that not for a second outstays its welcome. Liszt scholars may nevertheless be still more grateful for Howard's rescue of the other three, and first and foremost the nearly minute long Fantasia on themes from Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni , the ''almost-complete'' manuscript of which Howard has now himself completed for performance and publication.
Though self-indulgently protracted as Busoni surely realized when preparing his own shortened version , its thematic interweavings en route still take your breath away. The former reveals Liszt as flamboyant Hungarian rhapsodist while the latter wholly supports Howard's contention that it could well have been intended as an Andante spianato -like introduction to the devilish Valse infernale from the same opera—as Howard plays the two pieces here With Verdi and Wagner we are on more familiar ground, where it goes without saying that Howard has formidable CD rivals.
But throughout the disc I enjoyed his boldness and breadth. There is a spaciousness in his characterization that far more often than not compensates for momentary technical strain as towards the end of the Valse infernale or loss of finesse as now and again when gambolling with Weber. His tonal range is certainly wide, ranging from the deep, dark, brooding intensity he finds for the Ernani and Il trovatore excerpts to his translucent delicacy in the upper reaches of Gounod's Reverie.
Apart from a slight touch of metal above a certain dynamic level in the treble, the recorded sound quality can best be described in a nutshell as ripe. If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.
Wagner/Liszt: Fantasy On Themes From Rienzi by Steve 'Styvyn' Larson | Free Listening on SoundCloud
Skip to main content. Liszt Piano Works, Vol. The overture ends with a military march. The patrician Orsini and his cronies attempt to kidnap Rienzi's sister Irene. Stefano Colonna, also a patrician but inclined to support Rienzi, prevents them.
Raimondo appeals to the parties in the name of the Church to stop their fighting; Rienzi's eventual appearance marked by a dramatic key shift, from D to E flat quells the riot. The Roman people support Rienzi's condemnation of the nobles. Irene and Adriano realise their mutual attraction duet Ja, eine Welt voll Leiden Yes, a world of sorrows.
Liszt-Wagner
A gathering crowd of plebeians , inspired by Rienzi's speeches, offers Rienzi the crown; he demurs, insisting that he wishes only to be a Tribune of the Roman people. The patricians plot the death of Rienzi; Adriano is horrified when he learns of this. Rienzi greets a group of ambassadors for whom an entertainment is laid on a lengthy ballet. Orsini attempts to stab Rienzi, who however is protected by a vest of chainmail.
Adriano pleads with Rienzi for mercy to the nobles, which Rienzi grants. The act 2 ballet is noteworthy as Wagner made a clear attempt to make it relevant to the action of the opera whereas in most Grand Operas the ballet was simply an entertaining diversion. The Rienzi ballet was intended to tell the tale of the 'Rape of Lucretia '.
This storyline in which Tarquinius , the last king of Rome, attempts to rape the virtuous Lucretia , parallels both the action of Rienzi Orsini's attempt on Irene and its background patricians versus the people. The patricians have recruited an army to march on Rome. The people are alarmed.
Rienzi rouses the people and leads them to victory over the nobles, in the course of which Adriano's father Stefano is killed. Adriano swears revenge, but Rienzi dismisses him. Before the Lateran Church. Cecco and other citizens discuss the negotiations of the patricians with the Pope and with the Emperor of Germany. Adriano's intention to kill Rienzi wavers when Rienzi arrives together with Irene. Raimondo now announces that the Pope has laid a papal ban on Rienzi, and that his associates risk excommunication. Despite Adriano's urgings, Irene resolves to stay with Rienzi.
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He suggests to Irene that she seeks safety with Adriano, but she demurs. An apologetic Adriano enters and tells the pair that the Capitol is to be burnt and they are at risk. Rienzi's attempts to speak are met with stones and insults from the fickle crowd. Adriano, in trying to rescue Rienzi and Irene, is killed with them as the building collapses. In the original performances, Rienzi's final words are bitter and pessimistic: Disintegrate and wither, Rome!
Your degenerate people wish it so. Wagner later perceived Rienzi as an embarrassment; in his autobiographical essay, A Communication to My Friends , he wrote "I saw it only in the shape of 'five acts', with five brilliant 'finales', with hymns, processions and the musical clash of arms". Rienzi is very repugnant to me, but they should at least recognize the fire in it; I was a music director and I wrote a grand opera; the fact that it was this same music director who gave them some hard nuts to crack — that's what should astonish them. Thus the work has remained outside today's Wagner canon, and was only performed at the Bayreuth Festival in , staged by Matthias von Stegmann.
- Grand Fantasia on Themes from 'Rienzi' by R. Wagner for Violin and Piano.
- Free sheet music WWV 49, (Wagner, Wilhelm Richard) Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen.
- BBC Radio 3 - Night Music, Liszt-Wagner;
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The success of Rienzi — his first real success of any kind — was crucial in Wagner's career, launching him as a composer to be reckoned with. It was followed, within months, by his appointment as Kapellmeister at the Dresden Opera February , which also gave him considerable prestige. The young Eduard Hanslick , later to be one of Wagner's foremost critical adversaries, wrote in in Vienna:.
Liszt Piano Works, Vol.30
Other critical comments though the ages have included apart from von Bulow's jibe about it being 'Meyerbeer's best opera' , 'Meyerbeer's worst opera' Charles Rosen , 'an attack of musical measles' Ernest Newman and ' the greatest musical drama ever composed' Gustav Mahler. Franz Liszt wrote a Fantasy on themes from Rienzi S. August Kubizek , a boyhood friend of Adolf Hitler , claimed that Hitler was so influenced by seeing Rienzi as a young man in or that it triggered his political career, and that when Kubizek reminded Hitler, in at Bayreuth, of his exultant response to the opera Hitler had replied, "At that hour it all began!
In every step of Rienzi's career — from Albert Speer claims to have remembered an incident when Robert Ley advocated using a modern composition to open the Party Rallies in Nuremberg , but Hitler rejected this idea:. It's not just a musical question.
More By Francesco Libetta
At the age of twenty-four this man, an innkeeper's son, persuaded the Roman people to drive out the corrupt Senate by reminding them of the magnificent past of the Roman Empire. Listening to this blessed music as a young man in the theater at Linz, I had the vision that I too must someday succeed in uniting the German Empire and making it great once more.
The original performance version of Rienzi was lost in the Dresden bombing of , [22] and the manuscript on which it had been based was lost in Berlin in No full copies had been made of either version, as far as is known. However, Rienzi was never established by the composer into a finalized version, so all performances of it since have been reconstructions.
A vocal score of the early s, based on Wagner's draft, remains as the only existing primary source.