Duparc / Wagner: Love and Death

Love and death – the eternal theme of all art, brought to its highest musical perfection in Wagner’s “Tristan”. Hermine May and Manuel Lange dedicate themselves to “Isolde’s Liebestod” – naturally as the climax and finale of a sensational program that, through the Wesendonck songs and nine mélodies of the passionate Wagner enthusiast Henri Duparc, builds with existential force toward Isolde’s fatal ecstasy. Even if Duparc’s cyclical conception may not have been intended: the selection of mélodies May and Lange present here traverses all the stages of love in “Tristan”, from restrained longing to sensual, albeit forbidden, fulfillment, and finally to the dramatic end. … Wagner’s relationship with Mathilde Wesendonck was also sensual and forbidden, and it was her husband who provided the composer with his comfortable Zurich refuge. By setting the poems of his beloved, Wagner draws closer to the “Tristan” material; the feverish atmosphere is almost palpable, especially in “In the Greenhouse” and “Dreams”. May’s “Isolde” glows with passion and devotion, further heightened by Liszt’s piano arrangement, which Lange performs instead of a conventional piano reduction. The juxtaposition with Duparc’s mélodies, whose fragrant harmonies already reach far beyond Wagner, is what creates so many goosebump-inducing moments.