Wagner: Piano Sonata in A-flat major | Kit Armstrong at Margravial Opera House Bayreuth

Declaration of love or a gesture of appeasement: Wagner’s Piano Sonata in A-flat major (’Album-Sonata’), played by Kit Armstrong in the Margravial Opera House Bayreuth, 2019. Richard Wagner’s (1813 – 1883) major musical dramas tend to overshadow his piano compositions. But the Piano Sonata in A flat major for M. Wesendonck (WWV 85) represents a significant turning point in the Wagnerian oeuvre. With a warrant out for his arrest for revolutionary activities in Dresden, Wagner lived in exile in Zürich from 1849 until 1858, years he later described as some of the most “formative and productive” of his entire life. It was here that he produced – alongside numerous theoretical essays and texts for the musical dramas – much of the music for the Ring cycle and Act 1 of Tristan. But for the first years of his stay in Switzerland, Wagner hadn’t been able to compose a note. That all changed in 1852 when he first met Mathilde Wesendonck. He felt inspired to pick up his pen once again an