Roger Allen, Of Bridge-Builders, Arch-Critics and Miniaturists: The Art of Wagner Conducting

The importance of the conductor in the performance of Wagner’s operas is beyond question, and it is significant that we identify particular recordings in that way: we quite naturally speak of Furtwängler’s or Knappertsbusch’s or Solti’s Ring. Wagner was himself in many ways the prototype of the modern conductor, and prominent among his copious writings is an influential and justly celebrated treatise on the execution of classical music, On Conducting, written in 1869 while he was at work on the composition of Siegfried Act III. Many of the traditions and practices of the central European school of conductors that dominated the concert halls and opera houses in the first half of the 20th century, and to some extent to this day, developed in response to the interpretative problems posed by Wagner’s later operas.