Program

Gabriel Fauré:
Pelléas et Mélisande. Orchestersuite op. 80

Richard Wagner:
Wesendonck-Lieder (Orchestrierung von Felix Mottl und Richard Wagner)

César Franck:
Symphonie d-Moll

Richard Wagner paid tribute to her with his Tristan: Mathilde Wesendonck, the composer’s adored muse and the author of five poems which Wagner set to music in his Wesendonck Lieder. The work, heard with two prominent artists in this performance – Daniel Barenboim and mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča – features texts full of yearning and dreams, for which Wagner found a new, insistent harmony. César Franck was deeply impressed by Wagner and virtuosically combined his style with an unmistakable French tone – for example, in his most important work, the late Romantic Symphony in D minor.