Siegfried Wagner: Das Barenhauter

Day 210

Siegfried Wagner: Der Barenhauter

Soloists

Thuringian Symphony Orchestra

Konrad Bach

I start this exploration of musical relatives with Siegfried Wagner, who was of course not only the son of Richard Wagner but also the grandson of Franz Liszt. I imagine that is was inevitable that he was destined for a musical career. He had some success as a conductor at Bayreuth but he also composed a considerable body of work including 16 or so operas - more than his father. These were quite widely performed in the early years of the 20th century but then dropped out of the repertory fairly quickly, although there have been some recent revivals and many of the operas have now been recorded.

Der Barenhauter (The man in a bear's skin) was the first of his operas and - in relative terms - the best known. It is based, like most of his operas, on a fairy tale and shows the influence of his teacher Engelbert Humperdinck whose Hansel und Gretel is one of the very few post-Wagnerian operas to remain in the repertory.

I found Der Barenhauter to be an odd work with no real sense of stylistic unity. Some of the music had a Wagnerian intensity - such as the final duet - but in other places it seems extraordinary naive and harked back almost to the style of mid 19th century Singspiel. It really was a strange mixture. There were a couple of really beautiful passages for orchestra alone in the 3rd act which showed that Siegfried could write music of real quality - but for that very reason they stood out from much of the rest of the piece.

Siegfried Wagner has his devotees - there is an international society dedicated to promoting his work - but I can't help wondering whether anybody would ever want to revive this music were it not for the fact that the composer was his father's son.  I suspect that I might be asking the same question about some of the other music I hear in this part of the project.