Mark Elder Conductor
My love of Wagner’s music began when I was a teenager and had an unforgettable evening listening to the third act of Siegfried in a darkened room with six friends – three minutes in, we’d lift up the needle and put it back to the beginning again because it was so unbelievably exciting. And then a crucial moment for me came in 1968, playing through all the operas in a huge youth orchestra in Bayreuth. Hearing that music in those surroundings was amazing.
The challenge of conducting Wagner’s operas changes as they progress through time. In the earlier operas such as and , you’re dealing with clear-cut, separate musical forms – however much he merges them together, you can always help you can’t approach the music in that way, as it all forms a continuous web of sound, and orienteering one’s way through the map of these later scores is a very different physical experience.
