Posted October 17, 2013

Posted October 17, 2013

Sent by a Wagnerian friend a recent piece from BBC Music:

Thomas Ades, interviewed in BBC Music magazine (July 2013), was asked what he meant when he characterized Wagner’s music as a “fungus.”

“Ah, the fungoid Wagner. In a way I realize there’s no life without fungus to break down the dead and decaying material and return it to the life cycle, so I feel that Wagner is really performing a wonderfully useful function . . . 

My problem is that Wagner is so political. Every tune, every note comes with a llttle badge that says ‘I represent this’ or ‘I’m a spokesperson for that’. . .  Of course, I would never deny the power and magnificence of Wagner. That would be quite absurd. . . If I listen to Tristan, I find it very much a working out of certain harmonic problems that were posed by Liszt. What I love about Liszt is that he left a lot of things unresolved. He would make a provisional resolution and suggest it could be this way or that way. But Wagner says no-it has to be this way or that way-love or death or whatever it is, and I find that a red herring, really.”

O.K., Ades is entitled to his opinion, sadly Richard Wagner isn’t around to make comment on Ades’ works or to rebut Ades’ assertions.

Here is a BBC Music, but ths is just excerpts from the article, whch is available on subscription basis

http://www.classical-music.com/topic/thomas-ad%C3%A8s-0