Richard Wagner left behind not too many works other than those intended for the opera stage – one example are the Wesendonck-Lieder that our audience was able to hear last season. And yet this does not mean his music is completely absent from philharmonic halls. We still remember wonderful interpretations by Jacek Kaspszyk – the concert performance of the third act of Die Walküre (2013), or the full version of Tristan presented on two June evenings in 2016. On this occasion, we will hear an interesting retrospective of colourful orchestral interludes from the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Among the Danish composers active in the first half of the past century particularly famous and respected was Carl Nielsen. He long overshadowed (and was in intense conflict with) another Danish artist – Rued Langgaard, who was an insuperably eccentric figure, both in human and artistic terms. Completely underestimated in his time, Langgaard’s works were gradually discovered many decades after his death, leaving the impression of a fascinating and extraordinary individual. In many aspects his music anticipates the much later achievements of avant-garde composers (in which we can see a certain parallel with Charles Ives), for example, his methods of playing directly on the strings of a prepared piano and shifting clusters, anticipating Ligeti’s technique (which the latter admitted with astonishment), his repetitive style and other devices. His monumental Music of the Spheres written for a huge line-up and divided into fifteen sections featuring mysterious titles is hard to compare to any other work, not only from its epoch. Without doubt the emotional aura of the piece was marked by the traumatic experience of the First World War at the end of which it was composed. This rarely performed and recorded piece surely deserves greater attention.