Newsletter Vol 13 No 2 April 2009
Editorial
We are proud to be part of a large family of international Wagner Societies. The International Association of Wagner Societies (see News below) celebrates its centenary this year. Activities around the globe attract many of our members, but since the last years of Sir Brian McMaster's directorship of the Edinburgh International Festival there has been no Wagner performance in Scotland to attract foreign visitors. Let's hope that among this summer's influx of visitors to Scotland a few will enjoy the brief anchorage of the Flying Dutchman in concert at the Usher Hall in the last week of the festival. Our July Summer School, fortuitously, is devoted to that work.
Forthcoming Events
Sunday 10th May at 7.30pm: Kennst Du Das Land?
Songs from Far and Near, Performed by Singers from the RSAMD.
A recital by a group of postgraduate students from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Helen Lawson, their teacher, recently took students from the M.Mus performance class to Bayreuth, where they presented a programme at the Steingraeber concert hall. We hope to hear their impressions of that visit to the Wagner-Stadt, and we will listen to selections from their recital, which embraced a wide geographical range: from Lieder by Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms and Richard Strauss, to songs from Brazil, Spain and China, via England and, of course, Scotland too. The singers appearing will be Caroline Kennedy, Felipe Oliveira, Xuefei Zhang and Jemma Brown.
Edinburgh Society of Musicians, 3 Belford Road (by Dean Bridge)
Admission £5.00 (members); £6.00 (guests)
Sunday 7th June at 7.30pm: Das Rheingold on Record:
A Talk by Hilary Finch
An outline, with musical illustrations, of some of the great interpretations of this work available in recordings. The background and mythic sources of the first evening of Wagner's Ring will also be considered. Hilary Finch is well known as a music critic, writer and broadcaster, and this presentation is a slightly expanded version of her 2008 'Building a Library' feature on Das Rheingold for BBC Radio 3's 'CD Review'. We hope in the near future to invite other reviewers from that Saturday morning radio series to build up a new and composite picture of the best available recordings on CD and DVD of each part of Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Edinburgh Society of Musicians, 3 Belford Road (by Dean Bridge)
Admission £5.00 (members); £6.00 (guests)
July 10th–13th: Study Weekend on Der Fliegende Holländer at The University of Stirling: Tutor, Derek Watson
All members should have received a brochure and booking form for our annual summer school. Some places are still available, so if you'd like to attend either as a resident or non-resident, please register with John Holcombe (address below) or request a brochure from him.
Sunday 20th September at 7.00pm: Annual General Meeting and Evening Recital
Notice is given of the Thirteenth Annual General Meeting of the Society. Any member wishing to serve on the committee should advise the Secretary in advance, with the names of a proposer and seconder. At 8pm, after the official business and refreshments, a recital is planned involving former winners of the Society's Bayreuth Scholarship. Details of this will be given in the next Newsletter.
Edinburgh Society of Musicians, 3 Belford Road. Please note early start time!
Sunday 11th October at 7.30pm: Wagner's Mendelssohn -
A Lecture by Monika Hennemann
Monika Hennemann will attempt to shed some new light on the fascinatingly complex artistic relationship between Wagner and Mendelssohn. She outlines not only the familiar story of Wagner's combative literary response to Mendelssohn, but investigates hitherto hidden Mendelssohnian influences on Wagner's mature works, impressions that even emerged unbidden in the elderly Wagner's dreams. Among other things, she will reveal some strangely compelling connections between the Hebrides Overture, Die Walküre - and Scottish folk songs!
Monika Hennemann has been a member of the musicology faculty at Florida State University and the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. She is at present a visiting lecturer at the University of Birmingham, UK, and Programme Director of the Deutsche Sommerschule am Atlantik at the University of Rhode Island, US. Her publications include chapters in the Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn, the Cambridge Companion to Liszt, Mendelssohn in Performance (Indiana University Press) and The Mendelssohns: Their Music in History (Oxford University Press). She has recently completed an extensive book, due to be published before the end of this year, in German, on Mendelssohn's opera projects. For this Mendelssohn centenary year she has broadcast frequently on radio in the US, and has
contributed an item on Mendelssohn in Scotland for the television programme Künstler und Landschaften (Artists and Landscapes) on Deutsche Welle TV.
Special Book & CD Offers
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún: by J. R. R. Tolkien
HarperCollins. Hardback. ISBN 9780007317233
Pre-ordered copies of this book will be available at the meeting on 10th May
RRP £18.99. Our price to members: £15.99 [saving £3!]
The first publication of a previously unknown work by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the epic story of the Norse hero Sigurd, the dragon-slayer, the revenge of his wife, Gudrun, and the Fall of the Nibelungs. Deriving his version primarily from his close study of the ancient poetry of Norway and Iceland known as the Poetic Edda, and from the later prose work the Volsunga Saga, Tolkien employed a verse-form of short stanzas whose lines embody in English the exacting alliterative rhythms and the concentrated energy of the poems of the Edda.
Edited by Christopher Tolkien.
Die Walküre: Conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Live performance at La Scala Milan, 29th April 1958
IDI6549/51. 3 CDs. Pre-ordered copies will be available at the meeting on 10th May
Our price to members £24.50
Another first: a recording of a remarkable performance which was long thought to be lost.
The sound quality is not great, but the interpretation is vivid, the orchestral playing is superb and the cast stellar: Ludwig Suthaus (Siegmund), Leonie Rysanek (Sieglinde), Gottlob Frick (Hunding), Hans Hotter (Wotan), Birgit Nilsson (Brünnhilde), Christa Ludwig (Fricka).
If you would like to reserve a copy of either of the above, please order through Derek Watson (address below) enclosing a cheque made payable to Linton Books for £15.99 (book only), £24.50 (CDs only) or £40.49 (book + CD).
If you wish the item(s) to be posted please add £3.00 to your cheque.
News in Brief
- The performances of Opera Scenes by students of the RSAMD on Thursday 11th and Saturday June 13th, will include the latter part of Act One of Die Walküre featuring the Society's most recent Bayreuth Scholarship winners, Fiona Scott (Sieglinde) and Bjartmar Sigurdsson (Siegmund). RSAMD box office: 0141 332 5057.
- At the time of writing, Volume 4 of our biennial Wagner Society of Scotland Journal is scheduled for publication in the summer. All members will receive a copy.
- Sherwin Sloan of the Wagner Society of Southern California will lead a special group trip to Seattle Opera's production of the Ring, August 8th to 14th. Contact Derek Watson for further details.
- The Semperoper in Dresden will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its re-opening with two cycles of Willi Decker's production of Der Ring des Nibelungen in February and March 2010. Contact Derek Watson for a brochure in English.
- The Anhaltisches Theater in Dessau presents a new production of Lohengrin, opening on October 3rd. Contact Derek Watson for further details.
- Penelope Turing and David Stannard celebrate the Hans Hotter Centenary with a week's course at the Lodge Hill Centre, West Sussex, from October 23rd to 30th. Details from Penelope at 411 Beatty House, Dolphin Square, London, SW1V 3PL.
- The International Association of Wagner Societies [RWVI] has entered a new era in this, the year of its centenary. At a special meeting in Bayreuth in February, delegates voted for a merger of the German and non-German societies (previously separate units with separate constitutions) to form one unified body with a new and revised constitution. This is an important achievement and the Association's President, Professor Eva Märtson, has written of new tasks for the international body, especially the encouragement of young musicians. The former President, who greatly enlarged the international aspect of the Association, Herr Josef Lienhart, will be created its Honorary President at the Congress in Dresden next month.
- A new production of Tristan und Isolde by Christof Loy opens at Covent Garden in late September. Ben Heppner and Nina Stemme take the title roles, and Antonio Pappano conducts a cast including Matti Salminen (Marke), Sophie Koch (Brangäne), and Michael Volle (Kurwenal).
- Welsh National Opera has announced a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for June of 2010. Bryn Terfel will take the role of Hans Sachs for the first time.
With our next Newsletter...
Janet Hilder will report on the May Congress of The International Association of Wagner Societies and we will have another book or CD offer. In November it will be 25 years since the foundation of a Wagner Society in Scotland. We plan to celebrate with some special events, which you will read about in our next issue!
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 & Membership Secretary: John Holcombe, 4 Galleon Court, Lamer Street, Dunbar, East Lothian, EH42 1GX; e-mail john@holc.wanadoo.co.uk
