Wagner-Lesarten
Wagner & Bruckner

»It is undisputed that the alleged references to Wagner reveal similarities between Bruckner's and Wagner's music. And in a symphony dedicated to Wagner, it would be understandable that one might view them as allusions to the dedicatee. Bruckner himself, however, does not seem to have done this«. These are the words of Egon Voss, a doyen of Wagner research, in regard to Bruckner's Third Symphony, the so-called Wagner Symphony. Bruckner dedicated it to Wagner after Wagner chose this symphony (Bruckner also provided him with the Second Symphony as an option), and certainly there are evocations reminiscent of Wagner's music. But by now musicologists are quite in agreement that these are not references in the strict sense, allusions perhaps, motifs, that Bruckner continues to develop autonomously - especially when one considers that he cut out the alleged references to Wagner in his later versions, above all in the final, third version. »As a composer, he was self-confident enough to recognize these similarities as dependencies and thus as weaknesses. Their almost radical elimination in the revisions of 1877 and 1889 demonstrates that Bruckner the composer must not be confused with Bruckner the person. As submissive and naïvely uncritical the person was towards Wagner, as self-confident and free was the composer«. Voss continues, referencing the familiar dichotomy between person and composer, here: Wagner devotee and autonomous composer. Concerto Köln and Kent Nagano have now chosen this third version to illustrate the closeness and simultaneous distance to Wagner that is characteristic of so many composers ›after‹ and ›around‹ Wagner. One doesn't aspire to be an epigone, but it is impossible to get past Wagner. »The revisions of the Third Symphony document Bruckner's unconditional resolve towards his own style and voice«, concludes Voss: »It is in this unconditionality, which Bruckner was never capable of living however, that Bruckner proves himself equal to Wagner. Sadly, neither Bruckner nor Wagner ever recognized this«.

Programm

Richard Wagner
Fünf Gedichte WWV 91A (1857–58)
für Frauenstimme und Klavier, instrumentiert für Frauenstimme und großes Orchester von Felix Josef Mottl. Texte von Mathilde Wesendonck

Anton Bruckner
Sinfonie Nr. 3 d-Moll WAB 103, 3. Fassung (1889)

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