Willkommen beim Goethe-Institut in Sri Lanka

Few composers can outdo the blend of fame and controversy that follows Richard Wagner. Performing his music, or planning to perform it, in certain societies provokes contentious and tense reaction even today (A concert featuring Wagner's music in Tel Aviv in June 2012 was cancelled due to protests). At the same time venues like the Bayreuth Festspielhaus and the Metropolitan Opera perform his music to sold out audiences.

Musically Wagner is remembered almost completely for his operas. His concept of Gesamtkunstwerk (Total work of art) drove him to create masterpieces based mostly on folk-legend and were musically intense and visually breath-taking, bringing all the art forms together under one dramatic purpose. The emotional severity of his music is attributed primarily to his use of extreme chromaticism and frequent shifts in tonality. Tristan und Isolde was so harmonically intense that some consider it the starting point of modern music. Outside of his operas there are just two other works which are still frequently performed: The Siegfried Idyll for chamber orchestra, and a cycle of five songs commonly referred to as the Wesendonck Lieder.

The five Wesendonck Lieder were composed during 1857 and 1858, around the same time Wagner began working on Tristan. They are musical settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of Otto Wesendonck who was one of Wagner's benefactors. During the time Wagner and his wife Minna lived in a little cottage on the Wesendonck estate, a significant mutual infatuation developed between him and Mathilde Wesendonck. There are strong implications that the two even had a love affair.
It is clear from their correspondence that he was heavily influenced by her in the conception of Tristan und Isolde. Even when composing the Wesendonck Lieder, Wagner titled a couple of the songs explicitly as 'Studies' for the opera. It is in composing this song cycle that he fully developed the rich and intensely passionate harmonic language that made Tristan und Isolde the benchmark piece that it is. Although originally published under the title 5 Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme, (5 Songs for a Female Voice) the cycle has recently been performed and recorded by several male singers.

Marking the biennial celebration year of the birth of Richard Wagner, the Goethe Institut presents an evening of song which will reflect the influences and styles connected with Wagner, with the Wesendonck Lieder as its centrepiece. Performing will be Sri Lankan tenor Asitha Tennekoon and Pianist Eshantha Peiris.