Wagner: Siegfried Idyll first page (Breitkopf, 1900)

This week, I’ve chosen a piece which I was first introduced to last fall when Andris Nelsons came to conduct his first concert at Symphony Hall after being named the incoming Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Immediately upon his appointment in the summer we bought tickets to see him conduct the Verdi Requiem at Tanglewood, but just days before the concert, he suffered an injury which kept him stranded in Europe, and we enjoyed the performance without him (Carlo Montanaro, it should be stated, stepped in on short notice, and conducted a marvelous program in Nelsons’ place). Failing that opportunity, we bought tickets for the open rehearsal of his first concert at Symphony Hall. The program included the Wagner (with which I had not been previously familiar), and two glorious pieces which I’ve loved since my early years as a classical enthusiast (Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 with Paul Lewis); and since the first year of Snooch’s Silly Symphony (Brahms’ Symphony No. 3). It was a wonderful introduction to Nelsons, made all the more satisfying by the fact that we were attending an early rehearsal in his newfound biography with the players he’d work with for the coming years.

That was my introduction to Siegfried Idyll and I’ve recently discovered it was on the Tanglewood program in summer 2013 as well. Funny how once you become familiar with a work, you suddenly notice its inclusion more frequently than when you had no personal connection to it.

Ponder Points

I’d be interested to look through the piece to discover which of the themes are in fact leitmotifs, perhaps used in the Ring Cycle. I have read that Brünnhilde uses one of the themes toward the end of Siegfried, the third installment of the Ring Cycle, but I have not investigated further.

Over all, this is a pleasant piece, made all the more charming through the story of its first performance, with the thirteen players standing on the staircase or foyer of the Wagner home on the day after Cosima’s birthday, which happened to also be Christmas Day. A lovely image, whether or not it might be apocryphal.