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Donald Macleod explores Englebert Humperdinck’s early years, including his meeting with Richard Wagner.

German composer, Engelbert Humperdinck, became an international celebrity with his music for the stage. His lasting hit was his opera, Hansel and Gretel, which is featured in its entirety across this week. There were other huge successes too. Die Heirat wider Willen (The Reluctant Marriage) was highly praised after its premiere at the Royal Opera in Berlin, and Humperdinck took 19 curtain calls in London for his stage work Das Wunder (The Miracle). In New York, at the Metropolitan Opera House, after the premiere of Humperdinck’s opera Königskinder (King's Children), the applause just kept going so that the management had to turn the lights off, in order to force the audience to leave.

Humperdinck was born in Siegburg, and from early on his parents encouraged his musical abilities, provided he focused on his other school commitments, too. He went on to study at the Cologne Conservatoire and soon fell under the spell of Wagner whom he met, and later worked with, in the preparation of Wagner’s opera, Parsifal. Humperdinck travelled Europe, and in the early 1890s he saw the premiere of his own opera Hansel and Gretel, which was performed on sixty-nine German stages within one year. Humperdinck became a professor of composition in Berlin and, between his teaching duties, he continued to write many works for the stage. Opera houses clambered to give the premiere of a new work by Humperdinck and he became a giant of his times. It is his opera Hansel and Gretel for which he is remembered today.

In today's programme, Donald Macleod shows us how music was a part of Humperdinck’s life from early on; his mother took him to concerts in Bonn and he heard his first opera in Cologne when he was fourteen - Undine by Lortzing, about a fairy-tale water sprite. By the time Humperdinck was ready to begin at the Cologne Conservatoire, Ferdinand Hiller recognised Humperdinck’s talent and took him into his own composition classes, waiving the tuition fees. He did well, and soon Humperdinck competed for and won the Frankfurt Mozart Prize, and later the Mendelssohn scholarship which gave him the opportunity to study in Italy. In Naples, Humperdinck was able to meet his musical idol, Richard Wagner.

Evening Prayer (Hansel and Gretel)
Renée Fleming, soprano
Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Andreas Delfs, conductor

Weihnachten
Diana Damrau, soprano
NDR Radio Philharmonie
Richard Whilds, conductor

Piano Quintet in G (Allegro moderato)
Andreas Kirpal, piano
Diogenes Quartet

Hansel and Gretel (Overture)
London Symphony Orchestra
André Previn, conductor

Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar (excerpt)
Andrea Chudak, soprano
Malmö Opera Chorus
Malmö Opera Orchestra
Dario Salvi, conductor

Notturno in G, for violin and string quartet
Lydia Dubrovskaya, violin
Diogenes Quartet

Junge Lieder
Christina Landshamer, soprano
Hinrich Alpers, piano

Produced by Luke Whitlock