Wagner: Vorspiel und Liebestod & Tchaikovsky: Symphony in F

Richard Wagner and Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky: these two composers seem to represent two musical extremes on this one album, with their only connection being the orchestra and the conductor who here perform their works. Wagner had proclaimed himself as the savior of German Romantic music, the master who would raise opera and its performance to a higher level; Tchaikovsky was a tormented Russian Romantic composer who was considered to be too focused on Italian music to be truly Russian and yet whose music was regarded as being too Russian to ever sound truly European. Wagner’s “Vorspiel und Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony in f minor No. 4, op. 36 are presented here together by the Philharmonie Zuidnederland conducted by Dmitri Liss.