Wagner: Concert Overtures CD review – a nimble account of the composer's early works

[Neil McCauley]

Even if the Bayreuth festival persists in ignoring everything Wagner composed before The Flying Dutchman, Wagnerians generally acknowledge that his career began with his first two completed operas, Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot. But even those works are not the beginning of the story, for Wagner composed a wealth of orchestral music from his student days onwards. Four of the scores from the 1830s are included in Jun Märkl’s collection, alongside the overtures to the first two operas. Die Feen, based on a Gozzi play, was not performed in full until five years after Wagner’s death in 1883, but the overture was played in 1835, the same year that Das Liebesverbot, which used an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, reached the stage. This disc features two concert overtures, in ......

continues at https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/30/wagner-concert-overtures-cd-review-a-nimble-account-of-the-composers-early-works