Birthday concert for Anton Bruckner

International Brucknerfest Linz 2025.  Tristan in pocket format.

Images, language, movement, music: in hardly any other medium do these art forms merge into such a harmonious unity as in film. But even more than half a century before images learnt to 'walk', Richard Wagner had something very similar in mind: a "Gesamtkunstwerk" that would unite all the arts and thus enable a holistic, multi-sensory experience. "If my grandfather were alive today," his grandson Wolfgang Wagner stated succinctly in 1977, "he would undoubtedly be working in Hollywood."

But where does this physical, almost tangible power of Wagner's music come from? The soloist ensemble D'Accord uses his opera Tristan und Isolde to make this audible and turns Wagner's concept on its head: instead of an opulent stage set, dramatic action and a focus on text and singing, the paraphrase for string septet created by Martina Trumpp places the music alone at the centre, allowing the images to emerge with all the greater luminosity before the inner eye.