Wilhelm Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Sir Georg Solti
Vienna Philharmonic

Wagner wrote this tender composition for chamber orchestra as a birthday gift to his second wife, Cosima, who was the daughter of the famous Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. It was composed around the time when he was nearing the completion of the score for his music drama Siegfried—one of the four operas in his operatic cycle The Ring—and after the birth of their first son together, Siegfried. The premier of Siegfried Idyll took place on the staircase of Tribschen—their home in Switzerland—on the morning of Christmas Eve in 1870, which was Cosima's 33rd birthday.

Wagner on Cosima, his new son, and his life: "She has borne to me a wonderfully beautiful and vigorous boy, whom I could boldly call `Siegfried'; he is now growing, together with my work, and gives me a new long life which has at last attained a meaning."

Cosima on the premier of Siegfried Idyll : "As I awoke, my ear caught a sound, which swelled fuller and fuller; no longer could I imagine myself to be dreaming: music was sounding, and such music! When it died away, Richard came into my room with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic birthday poem. I was in tears, but so were all the rest of the household. Richard had arranged his orchestra on the staircase, and thus was our Tribschen consecrated forever."