SOMM Recordings is immensely proud to present newly restored releases of Siegfried Wagner (1869–1930) conducting the music of his father, Richard Wagner (1813–1883). These recordings of the younger Wagner leading the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, the Berlin State Opera Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra were made soon after the introduction of the electrical recording process in April 1925. The painstaking audio restoration of these recordings by long-time SOMM collaborator, Lani Spahr, has been so expertly and stunningly achieved that it is difficult to believe they come from a century ago.

Siegfried Wagner was named for the young hero in Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle and immortalised in the Siegfried Idyll, included on this release. He was born to Richard Wagner and his future wife, Cosima (née Liszt), on 6 June 1869. Although Siegfried considered following a profession outside music (and, as a youth, studied architecture in Berlin and in Karlsruhe), it was inevitable that he would follow a career in music given the lineage of both his parents and his grandfather, Franz Liszt.

In addition to receiving instruction in music from Liszt, the thirteen-year-old Siegfried began his advanced musical studies in Frankfurt with Engelbert Humperdinck, a true disciple of Richard Wagner. Siegfried became an assistant at Bayreuth in 1892, immersing himself in his father’s music under the strong influence of Cosima Wagner and the conductor Hans Richter. In 1895, he made his debut at Bayreuth conducting a complete Ring cycle. The debut was a considerable artistic success, and Siegfried’s future as the true guardian of the Wagner inheritance was assured, as he took a greater share in the direction of the Bayreuth Festival. With Cosima’s full endorsement, Siegfried assumed the general directorship from his mother in 1908.

Siegfried’s busy professional life was devoted in the main to Bayreuth in the 1920s, but it was also during this time that he began a recording career devoted almost exclusively to his father’s and his own works. Apart from his evident qualities as a conductor of his father’s music – heard here in the recorded legacy he left of his performances at Bayreuth and in Berlin and London – he was equally keen to establish himself as a composer. The first of his twelve completed operas, Der Bärenhäuter (Bearskin) inspired by the German fairytale, met with public and critical acclaim when it was produced in 1899. The acoustic recording of the overture is heard here.

Among the Richard Wagner works conducted by Siegfried Wagner on this historic release are well-known selections from Das Rheingold and Die Walküre from the Ring cycle. Also included are a suite from Parsifal and selections from Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and Tristan und Isolde.