Wagner 1900. An interdisciplinary conference featuring two performances

Registration is now open for ‘Wagner 1900’, an interdisciplinary conference hosted by Jesus College and the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford on 9-11 April 2018.

With a rich academic programme, Wagner 1900 will investigate the impact of Richard Wagner on fin-de-siècle Vienna in music, history, politics, the visual arts, theatre and German culture.

The conference features two performances:

Kokoschka’s Doll/The Art of Love (2017), Holywell Music Room, 10 April

Kokoschka’s Doll, commissioned from John Casken by the ensemble Counterpoise, investigates the tempestuous love affair between Alma Mahler and Oskar Kokoschka. The singer/narrator will be the distinguished bass Sir John Tomlinson. The first half of the programme sets the scene with a sequence of music and text featuring the work of Gustav and Alma Mahler, Wagner and Zemlinsky, under the title The Art of Love: Alma Mahler’s Life and Music. The sequence, performed by the mezzo-soprano Rozanna Madylus, incorporates an unpublished song by Alma previously unperformed in the UK.

Isolde (1903/2018), Sheldonian Theatre, 11 April

Isolde combines a historical perspective on the landmark Mahler/Roller production of Tristan und Isolde in Vienna (1903) with a bold new interpretation of the opera, performed in an intimate chamber reduction, focusing on the character of Isolde. The performance will be conducted by John Warner and directed by Cecilia Stinton, with Kirstin Sharpin (Isolde) and Mae Heydorn (Brangäne).

Programme

Monday 9 April 2018

Morning: arrivals

12.15am-12.45am: Registration, Ship Street Center, Jesus College

12.45am-1.00pm: Welcome and introduction (Anna Stoll Knecht)

1.00-2.00pm: Keynote Barry Millington

2.15-3.45pm: Session 1

Morten Solvik: On Heroes and Prophets. Wagner’s Beethoven in Vienna

Anne Leonard: The Challenge of Immmateriality in Wagnerian Painting

Wendy Ligon Smith: Electric Designs: The working relationship between Adolphe Appia and Mariano Fortuny

Coffee Break

4.15-5.45pm: Session 2

Richard Moukarzel: Theatre as a codified mediator: the posthumanistic ideal of Wagner, Artaud and Brecht

Hilda Meldrum Brown: Reconfigurations of the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk ca. 1900

Nicholas Vazsonyi: Warning: Consuming Wagner Can be Hazardous to your Health: On Tristan and Isolde and Death in Venice

7pm: Drinks Reception, Jesus College

7.30pm: Wagnerian Conference dinner in Hall

Tuesday 10 April

9.30-10-30am: Keynote Patrick Carnegy: Tristan und Isolde, Vienna 1903: Mahler and Roller’s abrogation of Wahnfried

10.30-11.30am: Roundtable Isolde

Coffee Break

12.00am-1.00pm: Session 3

Diane V. Silverthorne: Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde arranged by Mahler and Roller: the visible deeds of music

Matthew Werley: Mahler reading Wagner reading Gluck: Rollers Iphigenie in Aulis (1907) and the Birth of Modern Dance in Vienna

Lunch Break

2.15-3.45pm: Session 4

Peter Franklin: Beyond the magic theatre: reconsidering a fin-de-siècle Wagner in Vienna, 1933

Roger Allen: Wagner and Wagnerism in fin de siècle Vienna: Houston Stewart Chamberlain and The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

Hermann Grampp: The nationalist Wagnerian milieu in Vienna between 1900 and 1914

Coffee Break

4.15am-5.45am: Session 5

Leah Batstone: Art and Revolution: Wagner’s Legacy in Vienna 1900

Victor Nefkens: Wagner’s Sensuousness and Herzl’s Nietzschean Zionism

Laurie McManus: Wagner Problems, Freudian Solutions: Wagner, Graf, and the Birth of Psychoanalytic Music Criticism

8.00pm: Barry Millington introduces the evening’s programme and announces a major Alma Mahler discovery

8.30pm: Kokoschka’s Doll / The Art of Love, Holywell Music Room (Sir John Tomlinson and Rozanna Madylus with Counterpoise)

Wednesday 11 April

9.00-10.30am: Session 6

Karin Martensen: Anna Bahr-Mildenburg: The dark Isolde

Evan Baker: 1903 – 1943. Alfred Roller’s Production of Tristan und Isolde at the Wiener Hofoperntheater and Staatsoper with Gustav Mahler and Wilhelm Furtwängler as Stage Directors

Eva Rieger: „Nicht Bewegung – sondern Seele“. Cosima Wagner’s interpretation of Isolde in comparison to Anna Bahr-Mildenburg, Frida Leider and Rosa Sucher.

Coffee Break

11.00am-1.00pm: Session 7

Mareike Beckmann: ‘The One is the Darling of the Other’ The Relevance of August Wilhelmj’s Violin-Playing for the Tone-Language of Richard Wagner

Melanie Gudesblatt: Animating Opera after Wagner

Manuel Bärtsch: Wagner on Welte: Tristan und Isolde around 1907. Recordings for reproducing piano systems as sources

Christopher Fifield: Hans Richter

Lunch Break

2.15-3.45pm: Session 8

Laura Tunbridge: Looking for Richard: Wagnerian models for orchestral song

Genevieve Robyn Arkle: “The Resolution to the Terrible Problem of Life”: Wagner’s Parsifal and the influence of ‘religious redemption’ on the life and works of Gustav Mahler

Danielle Stein: The Return of the Dutchman and Mooring Utopian Futures: The Flying Dutchman from Fin de Siècle Vienna to the Bayreuth Premiere

Coffee Break

4.15-5.45pm: Session 9

Benjamin M. Korstvedt: The Performance of Bruckner Symphonies in the Spirit of Wagner, ca. 1900

Florian Amort: ‘…like the great Richard Wagner…’ The arrangement of Mozart’s Idomeneo (1931) by Lothar Wallerstein/Richard Strauss and the aesthetics of Musikdrama

Mark Berry: Modernist operatic canons: from Wagner to Boulez, via Mahler and Schoenberg

5.45pm: Susan Bullock in conversation with Tom Brown

8.30pm: Isolde, Sheldonian Theatre

Followed by degustation of local beer and post-conference celebrations

See www.music.ox.ac.uk/wagner-1900 for further information and booking details.

Enquiries to our conference administrator Lukas Beck: lukas.beck -at- music.ox.ac.uk