Summary
Wagner's peaceful Siegfried Idyll was written to thank his wife after the birth of his son Siegfried.
On her birthday in 1870, she awoke to find an orchestra on her staircase performing the music for the first time.
It's music which celebrates family relationships, and we hear from people whose lives and relationships have been touched and changed by this remarkable piece.
Cellist Nick Trygstad explains how the music conjures up scenes of domestic life and helped him cope with his homesickness when he arrived in the UK.
Karen West recalls a 50th birthday treat - a trip across lake Lucerne with her father, to visit Wagner's villa.
For Tim Reynish, the music has a special connection with his son - when William was born he recreated the first performance on the staircase of his Birmingham home; many years later he conducted the music at his son's memorial concert.
And Roberto Paternostro recalls a historic performance in Germany when he took a group of Israeli musicians to perform Wagner's music for the first time at Bayreuth - the opera house built by Wagner, and later frequented by Adolf Hitler.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2017.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others. |
| 0:05.2 | My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland. |
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| 0:16.3 | but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world. |
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| 0:37.4 | all around the UK. |
| 0:38.9 | This is my office and I guess it's kind of the closest thing to my shrine to Wagner really. |
| 0:43.9 | I've got a poster from the Meister Sing a Ball in Nuremberg. |
| 0:47.4 | I've got the characters of the ring in that picture there. |
| 0:50.6 | This is a photograph of Siegfried's death from the opera Gertademrung. |
| 0:55.1 | Lots of Wagner treasures. |
| 0:56.4 | I'm Karen West. I've been a Wagner nut for certainly as long as I can remember. |
| 1:02.3 | For the last 45 years, that's really scary. |
| 1:04.6 | That's a photo of Dad and I, at Bairroyd, that's a photograph of me and Wagner's grandson. |
| 1:11.8 | My father was a Wagner nut, and so I guess it was almost inevitable. |
| 1:16.5 | That love that he had for Wagner would be transferred into me. |
| 1:21.3 | So I was coming up to this very major birthday |
| 1:24.6 | and wanted to identify somewhere special to become 50 and I decided that it |
| 1:30.9 | would be great to go to Switzerland to take dad to Tribune, Wagner's Villa, on the shores of |
... |
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