The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s 2016 Spring Festival explores the War of the Romantics, one of the most important periods in classical music history, and a time when some of history’s greatest music was written and performed.
Date/Time: Apr 18 2016, 8:00 pm to 10:15 pm
Vancouver, Orpheum TheatreCost: $19.00
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The final concert of the 2016 Spring Festival gives the last word to the Progressive camp, and the music of Liszt and Wagner. Liszt’s Les Preludes is a perfect appetizer for the Vancouver premiere of Wagner’s epic Der Ring ohne Worte (the Ring Without Words), a breathtaking arrangement of all the main orchestral themes of Wagner’s extraordinary Ring Cycle of operas. And so the War of the Romantics ends – and though the argument may continue, the legacy of decades of some of the greatest music ever written is the most important, and forever satisfying, result.
In this last concert of the festival, it’s the New School’s turn, and Wagner’s game-changing operatic saga, the Ring Cycle is selected as their champion, as the VSO performs The Ring Without Words — an astonishing 75-minute arrangement of all the major orchestral themes in Wagner’s four-opera cycle.
It was the mid-1800s, and Beethoven’s towering genius still loomed over the world of music. As composers tried to come to grips with the shadow cast by Beethoven’s works, a conflict emerged — The War of the Romantics had begun. In one corner: Johannes Brahms, Robert/Clara Schumann, and the Leipzig Conservatoire, founded by Mendelssohn. This “conservative” camp viewed Beethoven’s music as the unassailable, unchallengeable peak of music, and their compositions aspired toward this lofty ideal. In the other corner, the avant-garde champions of “modern” music: Wagner and Liszt. These “progressive” composers felt that Beethoven represented a new beginning in music, and that it was their calling to continue to push the boundaries forward from where Beethoven left off.
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