RICHARD WAGNER

In cooperation with the Bayreuth Festival and BR-Klassik, we announce the release of Bayreuth 2020: Wagner at Wahnfried. This album features Siegfried Idyll, performed by the Festival’s Music Director Christian Thielemann and members of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, and the Wesendonck Lieder, with Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund as soloist. 

Dr Clemens Trautmann, President Deutsche Grammophon, expressed DG’s pleasure at working closely with the Festival once again, both online and in staging and recording a unique live event: “The Bayreuth Festival has shaped the reception history of Wagner’s music, and for us at Deutsche Grammophon, building a relationship with its team has been a truly enriching experience. (…) The challenges of summer 2020 have proved just how pro-active our partnership can be: working together, we succeeded in making the entire Festival programme available to a global audience online via DG Stage in no time at all. On top of that, and in keeping with Wagner’s own feelings about rethinking and creatively breaking with tradition, we made the joint decision to document for posterity the novelty of an opening concert held at Haus Wahnfried under the direction of Maestro Thielemann.”

The album will be released internationally on CD and as a digital album on 23 October 2020, with the CD available in Germany, Austria and Switzerland 9 October. Listen to the first digital pre-release track, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, WWV 91 – V. Träume.