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Celebrated American soprano Christine Brewer is a very special guest for this sumptuous evening of Wagner, Strauss and composers of the Second Viennese School, conducted by Edward Gardner of English National Opera. Tristan and Isolde and the Wesendonck- Lieder belong to the same turbulent period of Wagner's life, when he was amorously involved with Mathilde Wesendonck. His settings of her poetry share the same heady chromaticism and ecstatic heights as Tristan, and find an echo in Strauss's lavish tone poem Death and Transfiguration. Webern's masterly Passacaglia anticipates the exquisitely heard, Expressionist world of Berg's Seven Early Songs.