Our recording of Mendelssohn’s Viola Sonata in C minor. To hear the full album, go to https://wagnersnightmare.netlify.app/
For all the obvious differences between Richard Wagner and your average Western film, the cinema genre shares a surprising amount of themes and tropes with the operas of the 19th century's self-appointed #1 Teutonic bard. Check out Daniel's in-depth and (nearly) exhaustive essay on the subject through our website!
We hope you enjoy this performance of Daniel's arrangement of this Morricone classic from when we were in Rockport, ME recording our album.
Audio engineer: Peter Atkinson
Franz Liszt’s enigmatic and prophetic Nuages Gris.
Pierre-Nicolas Colombat, piano
Es Winkt und neigt sich - a beautiful lied by Friedrich Nietzsche. Very Schopenhauer-ian and Schumann-ian
Friedrich Nietzsche, composer
Daniel Orsen, viola
Pierre-Nicolas Colombat, piano
Author of original poem unknown.
A mediocre translation:
Grape whips nod and call.
They are all yellow and bright red.
They tell me with compassion:
All love ends with death.
As the waves, the vines move,
As in a dream they swing,
What if they could see how
A tear is rolling from my eyes.
The wind moves through the leaves,
Their color is like blood,
My feelings are unstable,
They move like a stream in a river.
Oh, vines, your leaves are falling,
As you bow in the wind,
You tell me all the love
It comes to a painful end.
Wagner’s setting of a French translation of German poem (here with English subtitles) by the German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine. Wagner gave Heine the backhanded insult, or compliment, it is hard to tell, of being “a highly-gifted poet-Jew.” Wagner’s respect was, although qualified, genuine; in addition to this song, Wagner, when creating “The Flying Dutchman”, was directly inspired by Heine’s retelling of the tale of The Flying Dutchman in “From the Memoirs of Herr Schnabelewopski.”
Ritter’s delightful compilation of Austrian folk music for Viola Alta and Zither, performed here on Viola and Piano - but with historically accurate garb.
