Wagner composed the Siegfried Idyll at Tribschen, on Lake Lucerne. In 1869, his wife Cosima had a son – Siegfried – and a few months later, the piece Wagner had written in honour of mother and son had its first performance. On Christmas Day 1869, thirteen musicians gathered on the stairs outside Cosima’s bedroom and she awoke to the new piece (originally called Tribschen Idyll, with Fidi’s [i.e. Siegfried’s] Birdsong and Orange Sunrise, as a Symphonic Birthday Greeting from Richard to Cosima). Among the musicians in the first performance, the trumpeter was Hans Richter. Seven years later he conducted the first complete performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the inaugural Bayreuth Festival. There’s a direct musical link: Brünnhilde’s music in the final scene of Siegfried – as she is woken by Siegfried on a rock ringed by fire – is drawn directly from the Siegfried Idyll.

Nigel Simeone 2014