Newsletter Vol 11 No 3 July 2007
Editorial
A Newsletter mainly devoted to Janet Hilder's excellent report of the recent Weimar Congress of Wagner Societies. Next year's Congress is at Geneva, 1st - 4th May, and brochures will be available at the next 2 meetings or can be posted to you. We are also pleased to announce forthcoming dates for your diaries well into 2008!
Forthcoming Events
Sunday 8th July at 7.30pm: A Silent Auction & A Book Signing
A silent auction is a fund-raising event, in this case for our Bayreuth Scholarship. We have a considerable stock of Wagner books, scores, CDs, DVDs, and we will invite you to bid for the items by putting your offer on a 'bid sheet'. If you wish to donate Wagner books, scores, CDs, DVDs[Wagner-related items only please] we would be delighted to accept them.* This evening will not be altogether silent! Linda Esther Gray will be present to sign copies of her new book, and we will feature some suitably midsummery music from Die Meistersinger, which is by way of prelude to this year's new production at Bayreuth. During the course of the evening, between chatting to Linda, listening to the music, or enjoying a drink and a nibble, you check to see if you've been outbid & you may bid higher!
Edinburgh Society of Musicians, 3 Belford Road. Admission free (a donation will be invited to cover room costs). *Anyone bringing items to the auction is asked to do so no later than 7.15pm; doors will open at 7pm; the 'close of sale' will be at 9pm.
Sunday 23rd September at 7.30pm: Annual General Meeting and Bayreuth Report
Notice is given of the eleventh Annual General Meeting of the Society. Members wishing to serve on the committee should advise the secretary in advance, with names of a proposer and seconder. After the official business and refreshments, all those who attended Bayreuth 2007 will be invited to share their impressions with members.
Edinburgh Society of Musicians, 3 Belford Road. Admission free to members only (a donation will be invited to cover room costs).
Our programme for the autumn and the early part of 2008 has been confirmed as follows, and full details will be given in our September Newsletter (all events are on Sunday evenings at the Edinburgh Society of Musicians):
October 7th Wagner & Elgar, an assessment by an expert on both composers,
Ian Beresford Gleaves, from Elgar's own county of Worcestershire.
November 4th Richard Wagner's Zurich, a lecture by Professor Chris Walton,
whose book on this subject is to be published in September.
December 16th Our Christmas Party- with guests & live music!
January 13th Christopher Underwood, head of vocal studies at the Alexander Gibson Opera School in Glasgow, introduces his work with a group of talented young singers.
February 3rd An Evening with Keith Warner. The director of the recent Bayreuth Lohengrin and the current Royal Opera House Ring cycle will discuss these, and his plans for future Wagner productions.
February 24th Wagner and Buddhism.Atalk bythe distinguished Scottish sculptor Alexander Stoddart, who has made a special study of Wagner.
Looking even further ahead: Dr Ian Robertson will give a talk shortly after Easter entitled Siegfried's Amnesia. We will also have another film event in the spring, following the success of our recent one. And next year's Summer School will be a long weekend studying Tristan und Isolde in early July
The International Richard Wagner Congress, Weimar, May 2007
A Report by Janet Hilder
On the early afternoon of Wednesday 16th I arrived in Weimar after a very smooth journey on the flight from Edinburgh and direct train from Frankfurt Airport. I immediately felt a friendly atmosphere in the town - the taxi driver commented "Scotland is my dream country" and an assistant in one of the town's many bookshops had visited Scotland with his parents. There seemed to be a much less jaded attitude to travel and meeting foreigners than in Western Europe. My first impression of Weimar was a lovely old town, with lots of green areas. That evening I attended Das Rheingold at the National Theatre, conducted by Carl St. Clair and produced by Michael Schulz. The standard of singing and orchestral playing was very impressive for such a small theatre. The producer achieved a high standard of acting from the singers but at times lapsed into parody: e.g. instead of wielding a hammer at the end of Rheingold Donner rings a bell which resulted in laughter from the audience at a most inappropriate moment in the score.
On Thursday morning I went on a guided walking tour of Weimar. There were different options and I chose the Classical Tour with special emphasis on Goethe & Schiller. We walked through the park on the river Ilm, landscaped in the style of an English 18th century garden, complete with follies, and hardly changed since Goethe's time. We stopped and looked over to Goethe's garden house situated in the valley beside the Ilm. This house was given to Goethe by Duke Carl August in order to keep Goethe in Weimar. Here he lived with Christiane Vulpius, who later became his wife, and wrote and prepared many works, including Tasso. At no other point in Germany or Austria have I felt so much that the atmosphere of a place has remained unchanged since the 18th and early 19th Centuries. You could just imagine Goethe and Schiller walking through this park and town. This in part may have something to do with the fact that Weimar was not heavily bombed and for many years was cut off in the former East Germany and not open to the influence of commercial tourism in the west (think of Salzburg!). Let us hope Weimar will be able to sustain a flood of tourists but still retain its charm as we also must not forget since the fall of East Germany and the opening up to visitors money has become available to renovate the old buildings which had started to crumble through lack of funds. We then came to Shakespeare's monument, commissioned in 1904 by the German Shakespeare Society, based in Weimar. The guide explained that many British had lived in Weimar up until World War I. The walk continued through the town of Weimar where we saw the houses of Goethe and Schiller and Charlotte von Stein (long term confidante of Goethe).
That afternoon I visited Buchenwald. Although this was not an official part of the Congress programme I made time to visit the memorial site of the former concentration camp. The bus terminals Shakespearestrasse and Buchenwald sum up a horrendous juxtaposition of the high culture of Classical Weimar and the debased form of civilization represented by the National Socialists. Thomas Mann, German author and great admirer of Wagner, comments in Dr Faustus on Buchenwald: 'Germany had become a thick-walled underground torture-chamber, converted into one by a profligate dictatorship vowed to nihilism from its beginnings on. Now the torture-chamber has been broken open, open lies our shame before the eyes of the world'. The bus takes barely one quarter of an hour from the town centre to reach Buchenwald, situated on the Ettersberg Hill, a former beauty spot. The day (17th May) was a public holiday in Germany (Ascension Day and Father's Day) and a group of young men were on the bus with crates of beer going to celebrate on a lovely spring day in the countryside. They got off the bus two stops before the camp. It was obviously very harrowing and moving to visit such a site of human suffering as Buchenwald but the one positive thing about it was that there were many visitors there, specially young Germans, who had chosen to visit it on a public holiday and who were not being forced to go there on a class trip or similar kind of visit. The remains of the camp and the Memorial Glockenturm which dominates the landscape at Weimar should act as a reminder to all the youth of the world to never let such a thing happen again. I was pleased to note that there was an official visit to the camp by the Presidents of the International RW Societies. In the early evening the Congress was officially opened in the Herder Church with an organ recital of works by Bach and Mendelssohn. This was followed by a concert of works by Berlioz, Liszt and Richard Strauss given by the Staatskapelle Weimar in the Weimarhalle. We were told that the orchestra is under threat of being disbanded. The authorities intend amalgamating the opera with nearby Erfurt, retaining only a drama theatre in Weimar. We all signed a book of protest. Unfortunately this theme is all too familiar to British audiences! After the concert a lovely buffet was held in the foyer.
First of all on Friday I managed to pay a visit to the cemetery where Goethe and Schiller are buried in the Princes' Mausoleum beside a Russian Orthodox Chapel built as the burial place for Princess Maria Pawlowna, daughter of Czar Paul I and wife of Duke Carl Friedrich. Then I attended a Symposium on Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Four speakers gave short talks on this theme interspersed with the Liszt transcriptions of Wagner including The Dutchman, Elsa's Dream and Tristan. In the afternoon I went on a trip to Erfurt. There were several options arranged by the Wagner Society, including Naumburg. Erfurt was full of atmosphere with beautiful half-timbered houses and narrow alleys - it was just like a set for Die Meistersinger. We walked over the 'Krämerbrücke' which, similar to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, is a bridge lined with colourful half-timbered shops on both sides. That evening there was a performance of Goethe's Torquato Tasso Weimar's National Theatre. This play deals with the 'artist in society' which is one of the dominating themes of German literature, right through to Thomas Mann and Günther Grass. It was interesting to note that, although the play is about the life of the Renaissance poet Tasso, the underlying situation reflects Goethe's life at the court of Weimar and his relationship with Charlotte von Stein. The performance was very impressive - there was almost no clutter on the stage, enabling the audience to concentrate on the 5 characters. I would not hesitate in saying that of all the 'entertainment' we had during the Congress this was by far the most enjoyable as it represented the German spoken theatre at its best in an authentic production removed of all the gimmicks of so many 'avant garde' productions and the audience was able to concentrate on the language of Goethe.
In the morning of Saturday 19th I chose to go on the trip to Tiefurt and Belvedere. Schloss Tiefurt was a summer residence of Duchess Anna Amalia. Goethe and Schiller often came here. We went for a walk through the park, laid out in the English style, with a tea salon, temple of the muses and Mozart monument. It was a sunny, early summer day and you could just imagine the poets coming here to walk in the park or read from their poems and plays. Schloss Belvedere was the summer residence of Carl Friedrich and Maria Pawlowna and was based on the Belvedere in Vienna. In the 'Orangerie' Goethe came to do botanical research. We visited the Russian Garden based on the Czar's palace in St Petersburg and came to a 'hedge theatre' where French comedies and Italian operas were performed, the hedges serving as wings. It was interesting to note that a special music grammar school was established in the grounds of the Belvedere in 1995 for children who are musically gifted. That evening - a performance of Die Walküre at the National Theatre, which opened with Wagner's sketch for Siegfrieds Tod with singers and piano accompaniment. Although of interest in itself it completely ruined the impact of the first bars of the opera with the storm music on the cellos just as the curtain is rising. Special mention to Christian Elsner as Siegmund, the English soprano Catherine Foster as Brünnhilde (who is engaged in the Weimar ensemble as leading dramatic soprano) and the Spanish soprano Nicola Beller Carbone as Sieglinde.
On Sunday morning there was a concert given by the orchestra of the Franz Liszt Music Academy, the same academy where Marlene Dietrich studied the violin! The students played Preludes from Wagner operas and the quality of the orchestral playing, especially the strings, was astounding for a student orchestra. Speeches were given by the President of the International Wagner Society and the mayors of Weimar and Bayreuth. The concert was introduced by the Director of the Richard-Wagner Museum, Haus Wahnfried. He included a quote by Thomas Mann from Dr Faustus describing the very moving Prelude to Act III Meistersinger on the Wahn theme which was then played by the orchestra. It is interesting to note that in this very hall, in 1932, Thomas Mann gave a famous lecture on Goethe to celebrate the centenary of his death. After the concert there was a special meal for all the participants held at the Dorint Hotel. The Congress finished off with a performance of Verdi's Don Carlo in the National Theatre which, of course, is based on the play by that other Weimar dramatist - Schiller. Apart from all the music and tours and not forgetting the food, the highlight of the Wagner Congress is meeting people from various Wagner societies all over the world. At all the events and in the hotels you mix with people from Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Denmark. This was my third Congress and I met people again who were like old friends and made new friends. After the final performance the theatre rings out with words "See you again next year!"
Bayreuth Visits Edinburgh
In June members of the Wagner Society of Bayreuth visited Edinburgh. A few committee members gave them a reception during the interval of a performance of Madama Butterfly which they attended at the Festival Theatre. After our few words of welcome there was a short speech of thanks from their president Herr Paul Götz, who is also the chair of the Stipendiat foundation that arranges the scheme of international scholarships for young people to attend the Bayreuth Festival.
Chairman and Newsletter editor: Derek Watson, Deanfoot House, West Linton, Peeblesshire EH46 7EA Tel 01968 660339 Fax 01968 661701; e-mail derek@lintonbooks.plus.com
Secretary: W S Scott, 83 East Claremont Street, Edinburgh EH7 4HU; Tel 0131-556 2617; Fax 0870 0568159; e-mail will@elgar1.plus.com
Treasurer: John Holcombe, 4 Galleon Court, Lamer Street, Dunbar, East Lothian, EH42 1GX; e-mail john@holc.wanadoo.co.uk
