Otto Klemperer…

Many of his recordings are longer than anyone else’s, but instead of feeling slow or boring, they are fascinating, full of incredible details that you just don’t hear elsewhere.

Instruments:

• 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon
• 4 horns, 3 trumpets in F, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba
• timpani
• strings

An overture famous for 137 years…

There is a long, complicated story behind this, and technically this is not really an overture. It is really:

“Parsifal, Prelude to Act I”

I am not personally much interested in the story itself, and I could no more listen to a complete Wagner opera than go through minor torture for a few hours. It’s just not my thing and never has been. I am in no way an opera lover. But this music is incredible, and even many people who don’t like Wagner’s music love this overture, or prelude, or whatever you want to call it.

Overtures are for those of us who don’t much care for operas…

This music stands alone, and for way more than a century overtures of this sort have been extremely popular around the world. In a way they sum up musically everything that happens in very long operas, so they are musical overviews in a way.

Wagner was a complicated person…

In fact, of all the major composers I know of, he may be the most unlikable. There is more to his story, and I’m starting to view him a bit more favorably, now that I know more about his life. He had a really rough childhood. So perhaps we should cut him some slack. But there is no doubt that he was one of the greatest musical geniuses who has ever lived. I try hard to separate Wagner the man from Wagner the composer. Parsifal may be my favorite composition of all that he wrote.

He always had money problems, and even his friends were exasperated by his behavior:

Until his final years, Wagner’s life was characterized by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors.“

The Overture (or Prelude to Act I) to Parsifal reminds you of how much slower life used to be. Imagine, this is just a “prelude”, meaning something that goes before. It is like a both a summation and an introduction. I think it contains some of the most magical sounds I’ve ever heard, and it has haunted me since I was around eight years old. I have always been hard-wired for sound. I was born that way. If I am around a total experience, the first thing to be engaged will always be what I hear.