Wesendonck-Lieder

Richard Wagner wrote relatively little music that was not intended for the operatic stage, and even less of it is still regularly performed. It took exceptional circumstances to lure him away from his great operatic projects, but his passion for poet Mathilde Wesendonck (1828-1902) was certainly one of those. They were both married; in fact, Mathilde’s husband Otto had offered Wagner sanctuary and a home on his estate near Zurich after Wagner fled the revolution of 1849 in Dresden. There, Wagner channelled his yearning into Tristan und Isolde as well as—midway through his work on that opera, in 1857—a cycle of five songs for female voice and piano, on poems by Mathilde. Like the opera (and Wagner incorporated musical ideas from Tristan into the third and fifth songs), they sing of longing: of an unattainable love, embodied in “Der Engel” by a vision of an angel, while in “Stehe still!” the singer imagines a whole universe stilled by the power of the lovers’ devotion. “Im Treibhaus” presents love as something intoxicating, exotic and remote, “Schmerzen” revels in sweet suffering and the final song “Traume” imagines passion as a ravishing dream. Orchestrated by Wagner’s protege Felix Mottl, the Wesendonck-Lieder have taken their place alongside Strauss’s Four Last Songs as the most popular (and potent) German romantic songs in the orchestral concert hall.