Kent Nagano and the 'authentic' Wagner

Kent Nagano and the early music ensemble Concerto Köln seek out the original colours in Richard Wagner 's Das Rheingold.

The real Wagnerian orchestra
In the 1950s, Harnoncourt and Leonhardt began 'authentic performance practice'. They went back to the sources of early music and had, so to speak, direct 'telephone lines' with Bach and Couperin for additional information. Gradually, the focus shifted from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the nineteenth. Now, one of the most iconic works of that romantic era, Der Ring des Nibelungen, is being tackled by conductor Kent Nagano and the early music ensemble Concerto Köln. And rightly so, because the 'Wagnerian orchestra' only really came into being after 1870, while the composer was already thinking about his Ring in the 1940s, also in an orchestral sense.

Kent Nagano: Wagner becomes different
Nagano on this ambitious project: "I am happy to be part of this very inspiring process. I am sure that after this we will never play and sing Wagner as before." Wagner's Rheingold, the opening movement of Der Ring des Nibelungen, was completed as early as 1854, but was not premiered in Munich until 1869, against the composer's wishes. The real baptism of fire took place in 1876 in Bayreuth in the Festspielhaus that had been built especially for the cycle.

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