The South Birmingham Sinfonia will be performing this work as part of the Summer 2017 concert.
SBS is lucky to to once again be able to collaborate with the renouned soprano, Paula Sides, who previously sang with us for a performance of the Strauss Four last songs.
Tonight's song cycle is the Wesendonck Lieder by Wagner, a setting of five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck written by Wagner while he was working on his opera Tristan und Isolde. This shows Wagner in a quite different mode from the usual one of an opera composer we are used to, and the songs are lighter in character than the famous opera works and are quite beautiful.
Wagner wrote these five settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, in 1857-8. Two of the songs, Im Treibhaus and Träume are, in Wagner's own words, "studies" for Tristan und Isolde, which was itself a turning point in Wagner's own output.
The songs are,