Richard Wagner/Hugo Wolf - Concert paraphrase on "Valkyrie" (audio + sheet music)
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
- Hugo Wolf, a native of Windischgraz (now Slovenjgradec, Slovenia), in the Austro-Hungarian province of Styria, was born on March 13, 1860 and died on February 22, 1903, three weeks before his 43rd birthday -- like Schubert, German music's first great lieder composer, of tertiary syphilis. Like Schumann, the other great lieder composer (also syphilitic), Wolf died in an insane asylum after trying to drown himself in October 1898. (He had committed himself a year earlier, but was discharged after four months.) Also like Schumann, he composed in manic bursts between periods of depression, once the disease entered its second stage, and like two predecessors, was an unsuccessful composer of stage music.
Wolf completed only one opera, Der Corregidor (1895-1896), based on the same Spanish comedy Falla later used in The Three-Cornered Hat. Indifferently and with difficulty he also composed incidental music for two plays long forgotten. As a teenager, he began but never finished a violin concerto and two symphonies (in 1879 he lost the manuscript of a third symphony while traveling). His orchestral repertory amounts to Penthesilea (after Kleist; 1883-1885), a turbidly scored, Liszt-Wagnerian symphonic poem; Christnacht, a choral work both naive and sublime (1886-1889), and the Italian Serenade (a 1892 arrangement of his charming 1887 Serenade in G for String Quartet).
Despite haphazard education that ended in a series of expulsions, Wolf the lieder composer was possessed of (and by) a psychological insight that revealed as early as 1878 what poured forth later between arid stretches -- some 300 songs, the finest of them both emotionally penetrating and musically profound. Mörike, Goethe (the Mignon - Lieder are incomparable), Kleist, Lenau, and Heine were his favorite German poets, plus Eichendorff when Wolf reached the expressive summit in 1887. For three years prior he had been an outspoken critic -- the only job he ever held -- in Vienna's weekly Salonblatt. Pro-Wagner and anti-Brahms, he was as honest as Berlioz had been, and thus made powerful enemies who took revenge later on. Wolf habitually lived hand to mouth, supported by a circle of friends who provided shelter and sustenance for ten years, and finally in 1896 gave him his own apartment. By then, however, the disease had entered its third stage, and his mood swings alienated many who cared deeply. On September 19, 1897, he cracked -- blaming Mahler, his friend of 20 years and onetime roommate, of sabotaging Der Corregidor at the Hofoper.
In October 1889, Wolf had turned his attention from German poetry to translations of Spanish poets. Between Halloween and the following May, he composed 44 songs called the Spanish Songbook. Then, between September 1890 and December 1891, he composed 22 song translations comprising Part I of an Italian Songbook. Thereafter he didn't write a note of original music until March 1895, when he undertook Der Corregidor, completing all four acts in piano score within twelve weeks. After laboriously scoring it, he wrote twenty-four songs in isolation between 25 March and 30 April 1896 -- Part II of the Italian Songbook. He spent the next months revising Der Corregidor. After setting his last songs in March 1897, three somber sonnets by Michelangelo, Wolf worked tirelessly on another Spanish opera, Manuel Venegas, which amounted to 60 pages of piano score, before his breakdown. Following his death, he was buried alongside Beethoven and Schubert in Vienna's Central Cemetery, impoverished to the end but officially a cultural hero.
(AllMusic)
Please take note that the audio AND sheet music ARE NOT mine. Feel free to change the video quality to a minimum of 480p for the best watching experience.
Original audio: Emese Virag (Hungaroton, 2008)
( • Paraphrase on Wagner's... )
Original sheet music: imslp.org/wiki/Paraphrase_on_'Die_Walk%C3%BCre'_(Wolf%2C_Hugo) (Musikwissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1974)
00:09 Siegfried's funeral theme/Tragedy of Wälsungs
00:43 Sword motif
00:50 Hunding's horn call
02:48 Sieglinde's misfortune
04:49 Bass: Wälsungs sympathy
06:28 Sieglinde and Siegmund love theme
06:49 Siegmund's aria
14:19 Valhalla motif
20:33 Fire magic
22:55 Wotan's spear
23:15 Wotan's theme
23:33 Fire
23:40 Loge's theme
24:09 Magic fire around Brünnhilde
25:24 Siegfried's sword interlaced with Brünnhilde's fire
There are probably more lurking. Add 'em if you have the patience. I listed the ones I recognized by ear.
Leitmotifs I found:
0:09 wälsungs
0:26 wehwalt
0:43 sword
0:50 hunding
1:55 sieglinde
3:54 love
4:59 wälsung sorrow (left hand)
6:48 siegmund's spring song
9:02 brünnhilde as woman, again at 9:56
10:03 bliss
12:25 fate
12:32 crisis
12:58 annunciation of death
14:19 valhalla A
15:13 valhalla B
16:05 ride of the valkyries, more clearly at 17:34
18:55 wotan's frustration
19:01 brünnhildes justification
19:56 renunciation of love (rheingold)
20:32 magic sleep
21:10 sleeping brünnhilde
21:19 wotan's grief (left hand)
22:55 wotan's spear
23:33 fire/loge A
23:58 fire/loge B
24:03 fire/loge C
25:24 siegfried (left hand)
Brilliant the way Wolf captured the sparkling essence of the finale, the "Magic Fire" music. A 30 minute concert paraphrase on themes of the opera without the opera's most famous theme (the Ride of the Valkyrie) and yet it's a very striking and entertaining piece. Maybe because of it? In a harmonic kind of way Valkyrie to me captures the essence of Wagner and it seems Wolf agrees.
Funnily enough wagner hated piano arrangements and condensed versions.
But it's refreshing to see arrangements other than Liszt. Gould is also brilliant. Wagner sounds sublime on the piano. The harmonic language becomes more transparent.
in fact, the Ride of the Valkyries leitmotif appears at 17:34
@@chikyushimin Oh you're right, I missed it somehow hidden in the bassline :)
Thanks for uploading this! It’s an amazing paraphrase of Wagner’s complicated music in the Valkyrie!
ça chante bien, c'est un vrai plaisir!!!
Very beautiful!
(Except some clicks around 22 min that scared us :D)
i apologize about that
Brilliant work!
Sometimes you make cringeworthy livestreams but this is a very very nice thing you did.
well fair enough XD
i was thinking the next livestream idea, how many score videos can i make in 24 hours
The livestreams are fun wdym.
How old was Wolf when he wrote this?
who is the pianist?
So, meandering. Hard to tell if it's the fault of the pianist or the composition, but it has nothing on Brassin or Liszt or some others I could name.
I'd say the problem of it that it is not really paraphrase but simply a word for word transcription of very specific points from the opera. I could spot all of of them.
Liszt on other hand really paraphrased the material he used. Either developing them in a fantasy form or a set of variations. Intermixing various motifs from the originals.
With this one you could actually take a recording of "Die Walküre and then splice it together into the exact thing Wolf did here without having to change a single bar.
Hugo Wolf and hugh wolff have always confused me...
One of the worst performances I’ve ever heard of this…too slow, no energy, zero emotion, zero passion, appalling phrasing. Just terrible.
Do you have some other performances to recommend instead? Thanks.