Liszt/ Steven Mayer - Wagner & Weber Transcriptions: Piano Music 33

Wagner's Tannhäuser was first staged in Dresden in October 1845, with a more elaborate version unsuccessfully mounted in Paris in 1861. In November 1848 Liszt conducted a performance of the Overture in Weimar and the following February mounted the opera there. His transcriptions of the Overture and of O du mein holder Abendstern (O Star of Eve) date from this period, both works published in 1848, the first in Dresden and the second in Leipzig. Both may be seen as part of Liszt's campaign to bring Wagner's work to the notice of a wider audience. The opera deals with the conflict of the Minnesinger Tannhäuser, seen first enjoying the sensual delights of the Venusberg and then in penitence. At the singing contest on the Wartburg he meets and falls in love with Elisabeth, niece of the Landgrave, his sensuous view of love arousing the hostility of the knights gathered together for the contest. Joining pilgrims, in Rome he seeks forgiveness, denied him until the papal crozier should burst into flower. Elisabeth and the Minnesinger Wolfram await Tannhäuser's return, but it is only through Elisabeth's intercession, after her death, that Tannhäuser finds final redemption. The opera opens with a prelude that makes use of motifs associated with the pilgrims and with repentance, leading to the Venusberg music and, in the Dresden version transcribed by Liszt, the return of the motif associated with the returning pilgrims. The Recitative and Romance O du holder Abendstern is sung by the Minnesinger Wolfram, as Elisabeth lies dying, the transcription ending with Liszt's added coda. Liszt's transcription of The Entry of the Guests on the Wartburg is the first of two Wagner transcriptions published in 1852. The music marks the entry of the guests to the singing contest and the Landgrave's welcome. A trumpet announces a festal march, and three following motifs accompany the solemn entry of nobles, followed by the singers. Liszt's version ends with his own development of the material. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) was first staged in Munich in 1868. Liszt had played through the score the previous year, with Wagner, during a visit to Munich and at a time when Liszt's daughter Cosima seemed on the verge of leaving her husband, Liszt's friend Hans von Bülow, for Wagner, whom she was later to marry. The mastersingers embody the ideals of German art, expressed through the words of the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs. The young knight Walther von Stolzing falls in love with Eva, daughter of the goldsmith Pogner, and strives to gain admission to the guild by winning the hand of Eva through victory in the song contest. This he achieves through the kindness and guidance of Hans Sachs. Walther, who lacks formal training and is not bound by the traditional rules of the mastersingers, offers his first song, Am stillen Herd in Winterszeit (By the quiet hearth in winter time), inspired by love and telling of the example he had found in Walther von der Vogelweide. Liszt's version of the song, published in 1871, is more improvisation than transcription.