Wagner Lectures with the Liszt Grand Piano

Wagner lectures in Steingraeber Haus: In his entertaining performance, the pianist Hans Martin Gräbner plays on the original Liszt grand piano and provides an overview of the plot and key musical points of Wagner’s works. His focus is not on the current productions, but – in addition to a brief outline of the genesis – especially on the work itself in which the musician introduces many sound examples (sometimes even sung) – as informative as charming.

Of course, the events can also be attended without a ticket for the festival. Gräbner: “My presentation should live, the audience should ideally after one hour have the feeling to be a bit immersed in the world of the work.”

Hans Martin Gräbner is a composer, pianist, conductor and musicologist. He has been a scholar of the Richard Wagner Scholarship Foundation twice and has been intensively involved with Richard Wagner’s work for more than thirty years.

The performance starts at 11 a.m. and takes place on every performance day and on each general rehearsal day for the respective performance in the Festspielhaus.

No presale / no discount

Long tradition at Steingraeber:

As early as in the fifties, introductory lectures were held at Steingraeber under the patronage of the Richard Wagner Verband Bayreuth. It was the Viennese conductor Maximilian Kojetinski (study director at the Bayreuth Festival for 35 years and stylish in the Bayreuth rehearsal week in 1988) and the unforgotten Erich Rappl, who mastered the often difficult task of commenting on the productions of “Neu-Bayreuth” – both occurred in the atmosphere of “Alt-Bayreuth”, the Rococo-room of the Steingraeber-Haus. In the original ambience of the Belle Etage of the “Margravial Camerier” by Liebhardt, Daniela Thode von Bülow (stepdaughter of Wagner and granddaughter of Liszt) had lectured Wagnerians in the 1920s – albeit in private company. Already 40 years before, from 1878-1882 Franz Liszt used the Rococo hall as his salon.