Dresden Wagner project continues with chamber music

The Dresden Music Festival gets its audience in the mood for this year's festival with chamber music concerts. On April 3, cellist and artistic director Jan Vogler and colleagues from Germany and abroad will perform Richard Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll" at the Wagnerstätten Graupa. On the following two days, they can be heard at the Robert Schumann House in Zwickau and the Parksäle Dippoldiswalde.

Wagner music combined with works by Jewish composers

The "Siegfried Idyll" will be set in dialog with works by two Jewish composers 80 years after the end of the Second World War and the horrors of Nazi rule: With the String Octet in E flat major by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who was ostracized by the National Socialists, and the "Study for String Orchestra" by Pavel Haas, who was deported to Theresienstadt in 1941 and later murdered in Auschwitz. Wagner (1813-1883) was an avowed anti-Semite and his music played an important role in Nazi ideology.

Vogler has invited an international selection of renowned chamber musicians and soloists to Saxony for the musical-scientific project. He wants to work with them on the compositions of Mendelssohn and Wagner in historical performance practice and juxtapose them with Haas' "Study for String Orchestra". Wagner's "Siegfried" can then be heard at the music festival on June 14 on instruments from the world premiere.

"The Dresden Ring in historical performance practice has found many fans worldwide over the past two years. It is a particular pleasure for me that we can now bring the visionary sound of the Wagner era to the musical state of Saxony with this groundbreaking program," emphasized Jan Vogler.

Music by Richard Wagner as a new kind of sound experience

With "The Wagner Cycles", the music festival combines musical practice and science to create a new kind of sound experience. Performances of the "Ring" on historical instruments and in the singing and speaking style of Wagner's time are intended to uncover unknown or forgotten facets of the music. Since 2023, one part of the Ring tetralogy has been prepared and performed throughout Europe every year - after "Rheingold" and "Walküre", "Siegfried" is now following.

The "New York Times" included the concert performance of "Walküre" with the Dresden Festival Orchestra and Concerto Köln under the direction of Kent Nagano on March 16 in Amsterdam on its list of the world's best performances in 2024. It was described as "the freshest version of this four-opera epic".

Vogler on the road with Bach's cello suites

Before the "Siegfried" tour, Vogler is on the road with Bach's cello suites. After performances on March 4 and 6 at Schloss Elmau in Bavaria, he will appear at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Philharmonie and the Elblandia Festival in Lohmen. Bach's cello suites are not only a hit in the concert hall - Vogler's recording of Bach's first suite has been used a good 365,000 times by users on Instagram as background music for their reels.