The global spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has had disastrous consequences across many domains, particularly culture and music. Concerts and festivals have been cancelled worldwide and it has required a great deal of ingenuity for artists and organisers to find a way to spread their message.
The Bayreuth Festival was no exception to the crisis’ wrath, but Christian Thielemann decided to hold a virtual festival (in which operas are filmed and shown online) with a real-life concert in Villa Wahnfried, built by Wagner to house his entire family within close proximity to the Festival Theatre (thanks to the generosity of King Louis II of Bavaria). The audience, masked and installed in the garden, respect social distancing and follow the concert on large video screens.
The anecdote is well-known, Siegrief-Idyll was composed as a birthday present for Cosima Wagner-Liszt and was played on Christmas morning 1870 by thirteen musicians in Tribschen, where the soon-to-be wedded couple were staying next to Lake Lucerne. This original and intimate interpretation by Christian Thielemann is played with a collection of musicians that were set to play the 2020 Festival. For the occasion, German composer and arranger, Andreas N. Tarkmann, has realised a deft instrumentation of Wesendonck-Lieder which is played by the same musicians. The works are sung by the great Wagner soprano Camilla Nylund, who was also unable to perform at the 2020 festival like the rest of her colleagues. © François Hudry/Qobuz