★★★★½ A behind-the-scenes look at Wagner’s influence in words and music.

Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House
July 24, 2016

When Tannhäuser was revised for its Paris Opera premiere in 1861 members of the Jockey Club booed and hissed and it was withdrawn after three performances. Princess Pauline Metternich, daughter-in-law of the eminent statesman Klemens, who continued to champion the composer despite some French resistance, had arranged the performance for Wagner. As a thank you for her support, Wagner composed a charming little piano piece, In das Album der Furstin M, and this work formed the keystone of an unusual words-and-music presentation for the Utzon Series by Wagner expert Peter Bassett and young Brisbane pianist Alex Raineri.

The work suggests the influence of Mendelssohn and his Songs Without Words sets, rather than the composer’s powerful, mature style. The two composers knew each other in Dresden in the 1840s but had little in common. Wagner, the anti-Semite, was disparaging of Mendelssohn the Jew 20 years later, describing him as “a great landscape painter who fails to move us to the depths of our souls”. But at the time Mendelssohn wrote Variations sérieuses, the young Wagner felt he himself could not compare as a musician.

Only two years...