Ingela Brimbgerg & Julius Drake & António Areal

Throughout the nineteenth century, the impact of Wagner’s operas transcended the strictly musical sphere and profoundly influenced painters, writers and artists fascinated by the symbolic power of his myths, landscapes and characters. At the heart of the recital are the Wesendonck Lieder, written during Wagner’s Swiss exile to poems by Mathilde Wesendonck. These songs, intimately connected to the conception of Tristan und Isolde, anticipate the harmonic and emotional language of one of the most influential works in the history of opera. The programme culminates with the Liebestod, Isolde’s final transfiguration, where love, death and redemption converge in one of the most moving passages of Romanticism, which has also inspired numerous works of visual art. The piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt, a great champion of Wagner’s music, offer a new perspective on this sonic universe, performed here by pianist António Areal as interludes.