Subscription Concerts 2023-2024Program C
No. 2005 Subscription (Program C)

Among Wagner’s operas, the most heroic character is likely Siegfried (appearing in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung [Twilight of the Gods] from Der Ring des Nibelungen [the Ring of the Nibelung]), the mortal grandson of the ruler of the gods. Wagner named his son after the fearless hero – future conductor and composer Siegfried Wagner – whose mother Cosima is Franz Liszt’s daughter.
Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll for a chamber orchestra is an exceptionally small piece compared to his other sizable operatic works. He composed it as a birthday and Christmas present for his wife Cosima to thank her for giving birth to their now-eighteen-month-old Siegfried. It was premiered in private: on Christmas morning in 1870, it was performed by fifteen musicians on the staircase of Wagner’s villa on the shore of Lake Lucerne to awake Cosima as a great surprise. He later touched it up and published it in 1878.
Siegfried Idyll has several motifs/themes common to Wagner’s then-ongoing project, the Ring cycle (premiered in 1876), especially its third part Siegfried. The most symbolic is the main melody given by the first violins at the beginning of Idyll: the same melody is sung by Brünnhilde, just awakened by Siegfried, during their extended love duet in Act 3 of Siegfried. The long blithe solo by the horn – Siegfried’s attribute – in the midst of Idyll is also heard toward the end of the same love duet of the opera with Siegfried singing “Laughing, you wake in gladness to me!”

[Kumiko Nishi]

The composer whose music is tied to the notion of the hero most tightly is surely Beethoven. He even named his third symphony (1804) eroica (heroic) reusing a theme from his Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus) a ballet about the heroic Greek god. Beethoven himself embodies the hero as well for he fought against deafness – a vital blow to a musician – to create revolutionary and philanthropic works.
In the Romantic period, R. Strauss who was already a big name both as a composer and conductor followed Beethoven’s footsteps: the Bavarian composer created what crowned his achievements in the genre of symphonic poem choosing the same subject (hero), home key (E-flat major) and central instrument (horns) as Beethoven’s eroica. After this mighty work entitled Ein Heldenlebenm (A Hero’s Life) (1898), Strauss would never compose a symphonic poem to forge a new path as an opera composer (according to him, Symphonia Domestica [1903] and Eine Alpensinfonie [An Alpine Symphony] [1915] are, though programmatic, not categorized as symphonic poems).
Strauss equivocated on the identification of “a hero.” However, it is generally believed that Ein Heldenleben is autobiographical, except that it was too early for the then-thirty-four-year composer to “look back” at his latter life as he would live to eighty-five. The work consists of six sections (performed seamlessly) with titles, although Strauss didn’t allow them to be printed on the published scores. I Der Held (The Hero) begins with horns and low strings announcing the theme of the hero. II Des Helden Widersacher (The Hero’s Adversaries) ridicules critics who lashed out against the hero, then III Des Helden Gefährtin (The Hero’s Companion) lets the violin solo depict Pauline, Strauss’ variable but lovable wife. A trumpet fanfare opens IV Des Helden Walstatt (The Hero at Battle) followed by V Des Helden Friedenswerke (The Hero’s Works of Peace) where Strauss “auto-quotes” about ten of his previous pieces including the symphonic poems Don Juan and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. VI Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung (The Hero’s Retreat from the World and Completion) comes to a calm climax with the horn solo and the violin solo melodies staying together, prior to the closing triumphant brass fanfare.

[Kumiko Nishi]