"Isolde’s Love-Death” was the title that Nikolaus Harnoncourt gave to the two concerts that he conducted with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Styriarte festival in Graz on 23 and 25 June 1999 - this was the festival that had been founded in his honour in his home town in Styria in 1985. Harnoncourt had never seen himself as a Wagnerian but, when the subject of "love" was proposed as the overriding theme for the 1999 Styriarte, he decided to use the opportunity to undertake his first foray as a conductor into the field of the Wagnerian music drama. A good deal of Wagner’s music can be subsumed under the subject of love, but in this context Tannhäuser and Tristan und Isolde in particular stand out, and so it made logical sense for Harnoncourt to choose concert arrangements of excerpts irom these two works for his only engagement with Wagner's world. The conductor planned the programme in such a way as to frame this bold experiment with two works by composers whose music is not only linked thematically to Wagner's but with whom Wagner also had an ambivalent relationship: Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann.
We are especially fortunate that the live recording that was made on 25 June 1999 also includes Harnoncourt's live commentary on the music, in addition to which we have an opportunity to gain an insight into Harnoncourt’s conducting scores and the relevant notes that are lodged in the Nikolaus Harnoncourt Zentrum at the Anton Bruckner University in Linz and that allow us to delve more deeply into the conductor's thinking.

Mendelssohn's concert overture The Fair Melusine op. 32 dates from 1834 and was inspired by the tale of a mysterious water nymph that is found in many European cultures. The most familiar version dates from the Middle Ages and tells of a woman who may marry only on condition that her husband never sees her bathing; when he breaks his word, she disappears for ever.
The Austrian dramatist Franz Grillparzer had drafted a Melusine libretto for Beethoven in 1823, but in the end it was Conradin Kreutzer who set it to music a decade later. Mendelssohn saw the Berlin première and "disliked it exceedingly” (as he declared in a letter to his sister Fanny), but it inspired him to give musical form to the narrative in his own concert overture - not in the sense of illustrating a detailed programme but by creating a poetic and musical evocation of the mood and atmosphere that he himself had felt when reading the legend.
The notes that Harnoncourt made when studying the score are highly instructive because he interprets this Overture as a paradigm of one of the underlying themes of Romanticism in general: the bourgeois world's engagement with the fantastical and with art, which in turn finds expression in the reinterpretation of love as a place of refuge and of longing. In responding to the Overture in this way, Harnoncourt was aligning it with a tradition that extends irom Alcina and Medea to tales about Undine and Melusine and thence to Tannhäuser and Tristan und Isolde before finally extending to Rusalka and Pelléas et Mélisande.
The Overture begins with a gently flowing theme in the woodwinds that is often interpreted as a musical image of water - the vague splashing sound recalls the iimpicl brook in which Melusine lives. Wagner later took over this theme into the opening bars oi Das Rheingold and it recurs throughout Mendelssohn's Overture with the regularity of a leitmotif, lending the music an almost ethereal quality. In terms oi its structure, the Overture is an Allegro in Classical first-movement sonata form: the introductory theme depicting water leads to the triumphalist motif associated with the knight who, in this version of the legend, marries the water nymph, and is followed by a third, more lyrical theme that describes Melusine herself and that may be interpreted as a reflection of the character's human emotions. The development section brings with it a sense of evolving drama before the themes return in the recapitulation and the Overture dies away on a quiet, almost other-worldly note - it is as if Melusine has sunk beneath the waves. Stylistically speaking, this Overture is typically Mendelssohnian: clearly structured, abounding in lyrical melodies, orchestrated with striking refinement, and reflecting a careful balance between Romanticism and Classicism. It may be an early work, but it already reveals its composer’s mastery in his handling of the orchestra. The Fair Melusine is effectively a symphonic poem. Although numbered among Mendelssohn’s lesser-known works, it is rightly held in the highest regard among his orchestral compositions.
Wagner first met Mendelssohn in 1836, the year after the latter was appointed conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig. Two of Wagner’s works had already been heard there: his Concert Overture in C major in April 1832 and his Symphony, also in C, in January 1833. Wagner initially admired Mendelssohn as a conductor but found his music too “neoclassical and backward-looking", its formal perfection notwithstanding. But, following Mendelssohn's death in 1847, Wagner turned his back on him and attacked him, along with Meyerbeer, in his demagogic essay of 1850,"
Das Judenthum in der Musik” (Jewry in Music), where he denied him any competence as a composer. Mendelssohn, Wagner opined here, “has shown us that a Jew may have the amplest store of specific talents, the finest and most varied culture, the most intense and delicate sense of honour but still not be able, even with the help of all these advantages, to produce the effect of which we know art to be capable: art that moves our heart and soul on the very deepest level."

On hearing an early performance of Tannhäuser in Dresden, the Austrian critic Eduard Hanslick described Wagner as "the most talented music dramatist among living composers" and placed the work on a par with Weber’s Der Freischütz, Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots and Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night‘s Dream.

“A band of pilgrims passes by; their singing - fervent, contrite and remorseful - rises up in an outpouring of hope and of trust in mankind’s salvation. It draws near us at the start, then swells as if close at hand, growing more powerful, before finally fading away. Dusk, and the dying echo of their chant. - With the onset of night enchanted visions appear: a duskily rose-scented fragrance swirls all around us; exultant shouts assail our ear and the whirlings of a hideously lascivious dance can be vaguely discerned. These are the seductive spells cast by the Venusberg that are revealed at dead of night to those whose breast is fired by a bold and sensuous yearning. - Drawn by the tempting apparition, a slim male figure approaches: it is Tannhäuser, the bard of love. He sings his proudly jubilant love song, joyful and challenging, as if to force the spell to do his bidding. - He is answered by wild rejoicing: the roseate clouds close in around him, enchanting perfumes fill the air and steal away his senses. In the most seductive of half-lights, his gaze, now alive to the most wondrous sights, grows aware of an ineffably alluring female figure; he hears her voice, a voice that, trembling with sweet desire, sings its siren song and promises to sate the bold hero’s wildest desires. It is Venus herself who has come to him. - His heart and senses are on fire; a fierce devouring longing kindles the blood in his veins: he is driven closer by an irresistible force and he now approaches the goddess herself with his song of jubilant love, which he sings in her praise in a state of the greatest ecstasy. - As if in response to his magical call, the wonders of the Venusberg are now revealed to him in all their glory: tumultuous shouts and the savage cries of joy rise up on every side; in drunken revelry the Bacchantes storm in and with their frenzied dancing draw Tannhäuser, drunk with rapture, into the goddess’s ardent embrace. With raging desire, her arms enfold him and draw him away to a realm immeasurably distant where existence as we know it ends. They race away like the Wild Hunt itself, and the storm then swiftly abates. Only a wantonly plaintive whirring still trembles in the air: a dreadfully sensuous rustling like the breath of accursed desire still billows over the place where impious charms had revealed themselves and over which night again spreads its pall. - But already the new day is dawning and in the far distance we can hear the singing of the approaching pilgrims. As their singing draws closer and closer and the day drives back the night, the whir and soughing of the breezes that had previously sounded like the dreadful cries of damned souls begin to surge more joyfully so that when the sun at last rises in its splendour and the song of the pilgrims, powerfully inspired, proclaims to the world and to all that lives in it that salvation is at hand, this wave then swells to the point where it becomes the most blissful delirium of the sublimest ecstasy. It is the exultant cry of the Venusberg itself released from the curse of evil, and we now hear this cry to the strains of the hymn. And so the whole of pulsating life courses through our veins to the sounds of the song of redemption and the two dissevered elements - mind and senses, God and nature - unite in love's holiest kiss.“

Wagner wrote this note on the Tannhäuser Overture for a concert performance in Zurich, five years after the work’s first performance in Dresden in 1845. In the "Dresden Version" of the score the “Venusberg Music" is still part of the opera’s introduction and accompanies the scene in which Tannhäuser tries to break free from Venus’s stranglehold. When revising the score for a production in Paris in 1861, Wagner turned this episode into an extended ballet almost ten minutes long, his aim being to meet the expectations of an audience that demanded a ballet in every opera.
Few of his works preyed on Wagner’s mind for as long as Tannhäuser. Only weeks before his death in February 1883 he told his second wife, Cosima, that he “still owes the world Tannhäuser". The Overture and the ensuing "Bacchanal", as the Venusberg Music was known in Paris, were given a concert ending, although this arrangement was not heard until 12 May 1877, after which date it became one of Wagner’s most frequently performed works. The Paris performances in March 1861 triggered a scandal that prompted Charles Baudelaire to leap to the composer’s defence with his own interpretation of the opera:

”Tannhäuser represents the struggle between the two principles that have chosen the human heart for their chief battlefield; in other words, the struggle between flesh and spirit, Heaven and Hell, Satan and God. And this duality is established at the very outset, and with incomparable skill, by the Overture. How much has not already been written about this piece of music? It is nevertheless to be presumed that it will continue to provide matter for many a thesis and eloquent commentary; for it is the nature of true art-works to be inexhaustible mines of suggestion. The Overture, then, sums up the dramatic thought in two motifs, the religious and the sensual which, to have recourse to Liszt’s expression, ‘are placed here like two mathematical terms which find their equation in the finale’.
The Pilgrims’ Chorus appears first, with the authority of the supreme law, as though to mark at the outset the true direction of life, the goal of the universal pilgrimage, which is God. But as the intimate sense of God is soon drowned in every consciousness by the lusts of the flesh, the motif which represents holiness is gradually overwhelmed by the sighs of the senses. The true, terrible and universal Venus is already looming up in every imagination. But I must warn anyone who has not yet heard this marvellous overture to beware of envisaging at this point a chorus of everyday lovers whiling away their time in shady bowers, or the accents of an ecstatic band hurling their challenge at God in the cultivated language of Horace. This is quite a different matter, at once more true and more sinister. Languors, fevered and agonized delights, ceaseless returns towards an ecstasy of pleasure which promises to quench, but never does quench, thirst; frenzied palpitations of heart and senses, imperious orders of the flesh, the whole onomatopoeic dictionary of Love is to be heard here. Finally the religious theme little by little resumes its sway, slowly, by degrees, overwhelming the other at last in a peaceful victory, as glorious as that of the irresistible being over his sickly and anarchic adversary, of St Michael over Lucifer.”

In both Tannhäuser and Tristan und Isolde Wagner explores a central idea in his output - namely, redemption through love. In 1880 he told Cosima: “It is the same in the Venusberg as in Tristan - in the one it is resolved in grace, in the other in death. Everywhere this cry, this lament." Whereas Tannhäuser vacillates between sensuality and Christian love and is finally redeemed from his sins by Elisabeth’s love for him, Tristan's conflict is rather different: here a magic potion is needed to break down the social conventions to which the lovers none the less ultimately fall victim. Here redemption and release are found only in death and in Isolde’s transfiguration. Her final words translate as "In the surging swell, in the echoing sound, in the world-breath’s wafting universe - to drown - to sink - unaware - highest bliss!"
Few composers have poured their lives into their art as much as Wagner, while at the same time raising that life to a whole new level. In Tristan und Isolde he wrote an opera on passionate love and on adultery, a work as brilliant as it is moving. The inspiration behind it was both trivial and romantic. While living in Zurich, Wagner fell in love with Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of his patron Otto. The affair was doomed from the start. Yet, even after the liaison became public knowledge and Wagner had to leave the house placed at his disposal by the Wesendoncks and end his relationship with Mathilde, Otto continued to support him financially and in 1859 bought the performance rights to the Ring from the notoriously cash-strapped composer.
These biographical details also help to explain the relationship between the characters in the music drama: Wagner is Tristan with his forbidden love; Mathilde is the devoted figure of Isolde; and Otto Wesendonck is King Marke, who ultimately forgives the lovers. The love depicted in the work was meant to remain purely human. According to an entry in Cosima Wagner’s diaries for 1873, “R. is against all pomp, and explains how he turned his back on subjects such as Lohengrin and Tannhäuser in order to do away entirely with outward pomp and present human beings without any conventional frills.” Although Tristan und Isolde may be clothed, superficially, in medieval garb, Wagner is spectacularly successful here from a compositional point of view: the entire music drama is based on the chord that is heard at the very beginning and that recurs as a leitmotif throughout the work, not being resolved until the very end. It effectively altered the whole history of music and opened the door to the modern world. For Nikolaus Harnoncourt, this chord marked the beginning of atonality and, with it, a repudiation of the compositional principles that had held sway until then in western music. But it also marked a rejection of the moral standards of the time: true freedom and redemption for human beings are achievable only when we cast off all social and moral fetters, as Wagner’s friend in Dresden, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, had demanded and as another of Wagner’s former friends, Friedrich Nietzsche, expressed it in his main work, Also sprach Zarathustra, the first two parts of which appeared in 1883, the year of Wagner’s death.

Robert Schumann's Requiem für Mignon is a fascinating choral work that is rarely performed on account of its unusual position in its composer's output. Schumann wrote it in Dresden in 1849. As his op. 98b it formed the concluding section of his Lieder, Gesange und Requiem fur Mignon aus “Wilhelm Meister”, taking the composite work beyond the confines of a mere song cycle for voice and piano, and demanding substantial additional resources in the form of five vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra.
Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Years of Apprenticeship) had been published in four volumes in 1795/96 and for nineteenth-century readers it was a part of the canon of texts in which the bourgeoisie could see itself reflected, even if initial responses to the work had been distinctly mixed. At Goethe's request the poems that the novel includes were set by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, although a number of them later attracted individual settings by the likes of Beethoven and Schubert before Schumann finally created the first cycle by setting nine of the poems. For a time he had toyed with the idea of writing an opera about Wilhelm Meister but later decided to set only the poems that are placed in the mouths of Mignon, Philine and the Harper. Although the nine poems are merely fragments of a greater whole, they none the less relate to the novel in its entirety and in that way constitute a modern musical form of narrative that does, however, presuppose a knowledge of all the underlying action.
The character of Mignon is central to the novel, second in importance only to the eponymous protagonist. She is a mysterious, androgynous-seeming child whom Wilhelm Meister meets on his travels. For along time her origins remain unclear and the same is true of her inner world, which is marked by a sense of deep yearning and pain. Following her death, she is buried in a ceremony that seems almost Catholic in character and that takes place in the novel in a “Hall of the Past". The term "Requiem" is not used here. Although Goethe’s text takes as its starting point the structure of a Catholic funeral service, the two otherwise have little in common. Rather, the ceremony expresses the Romantics’ empathy with a kind of pantheistic aesthetic that extends beyond the mere individual.
Schumann’s six-part Requiem für Mignon lasts around twelve minutes and strikes a pseudo-liturgical note. The composer sticks closely to Goethe’s words and to the stage directions that the text contains: the two solo sopranos and the two solo altos represent the children who grieve for Mignon, while the chorus moves from contemplation of the dead girl to an acknowledgement of the "formative force" of life and, with it, a return to an active existence in which “love, with its heavenly gaze,” encounters the deadly seriousness that is uniquely capable of “rendering life eternal". As with his Scenes from Goethe’s “Faust”, which was written over a period of several years and premiered in its entirety in Cologne in 1862 (only the third section, "Faust's Transfiguration”, was heard during the composer’s lifetime), Schumann created an entirely new genre here and one that is hard to categorize: it is a kind of imaginary music theatre for the concert hall and expresses a longing for redemption that was later to be found in Wagner's Ring and Parsifal. In his reflections on this concert Nikolaus Harnoncourt saw this feature as an alternative to the increasingly "despiritualized" world of egoism and misconceived love that had been robbed of all sense of transcendence.