Richard Wagner for Violin and Piano – Gerald Schubert & Bernadette Bartos

Chamber music and Richard Wagner?! What seems contradicting at first glance is yet being proven with this recording by Gerald Schubert, longtime member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and Bernadette Bartos, sought-after pianist and Lied accompanist: Wagners instrumental understanding of the vocal parts of his great music dramas and his own transcriptions prompted many of his contemporaries to their own composition of arrangements and paraphrases. Felix Mottl, from 1886 to 1906 conductor of the Bayreuth festival, Joachim Raff, Alexander Ritter and August Wilhelmj contributed transcriptions for violin and piano of motifs from Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Siegfried and Parsifal as well as the Wesendonck-Lieder.