Brahms, Wagner and Bruckner | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Already in Bruckner’s First Symphony the influence of ‘the master’, Richard Wagner, was making itself felt. In 1863 Bruckner heard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser in Linz, capturing its desolate yearning in his first movement’s third theme. Two years later Bruckner met Wagner for the first time at a performance of Tristan und Isolde in Munich; the opera’s romantic soul seeped into Bruckner’s Adagio, as disarming a vision of love as Wagner’s own Wesendonck Lieder. As he slipped into hopeless adoration for the German poet Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner wrote her these songs, moments of heartfelt stillness in a whirlwind musical career.