Unsung Wagner? Henk de Vlieger Wagner Transcriptions and Siegfried Wagner

[ewk]

Hi all,

As there have been already some threads about Wagner transcriptions, I hope this one can also be published although Wagner is hardly unsung (although some of his early operas clearly are – Die Feen for example).

I wanted to ask if someone has already bought and/or listened to Henk de Vlieger's Wagner transcriptions – he seems to have compiled some kind of symphonies from the operas. Are they recommendable? I'm not the biggest fan of operas but I love the orchestral preludes from the Wagner operas and I always wanted to have some "more" orchestral Wagner.

A further point are Siegfried Wagner's opera preludes – I like them all quite much. My question would be: Which one would you recommend to start with? For example, I would like to propose my orchestras to play one of them – which one would you consider appropriate to convince the orchestra of Siegfried's sheer genius?

cheers,

Sebastian

[Mark Thomas]

To answer your second point, Sebastian, I think that best of Siegfried Wagner's purely orchestral works is his early piece Sehnsucht. Unlike some of his music, this powerful and atmospherically orchestrated symphonic poem always seems to me to be a work which its creator had to compose. You can hear it here.