Today’s piece is Wagner’s Piano Sonata in Ab major—written for the album of Mathilde Wesendonk. Mathilde Wesendonk, along with her husband, Otto Wesendonk, was a generous supporter of Wagner during the difficult period of his exile from Germany.
Mathilde Wesendonk was a major inspiration for Wagner’s work in the ring cycle as well as Tristan und Isolde. It is apparent that melodic ideas for Tristan, at least, were already in his mind, and find their way into this work—albeit with somewhat different expressive effect. In Tristan, these motives sound erotically charged and emotionally overwrought, while in the sonata, they express much more reserved emotions.
While Wagner was a tireless proselytizer for “The Music of the Future,” which to him comprised a harmonious combination of drama, poetry, music, and stagecraft; in this piece, he reveals his intimate familiarity with the music of the Viennese classical school: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.
Sonata form was only theoretically codified in the 1820s by musicologists like A.B. Marx, among others—long after most of the Viennese classical composers who had based their careers on composing works in sonata form were already dead or in the last stages of their composing careers. The codification of sonata form led to much more predictable outlines for sonata movements by the romantic generation of composers.
In fact, Wagner composes this sonata movement in a very free, organic fashion, which ignores many of the theoretical dictums that Marx had laid down. These include beginning the recapitulation in the subdominant instead of in the tonic and rearranging the order of themes in the recap, which creates a more seamless connection to the development and allows Wagner to delay the return of the opening motive—a dramatically effective move.
All considerations of compositional technique aside, this piece occupies a fascinating place in Wagner’s output—combining as it does the intimate feel of chamber music, alongside dramatic music that calls to mind the Wagner of the opera house. Every phrase is lovingly shaped and masterfully connected to the rest of the piece, making this a uniquely satisfying addition to the repertoire of 19th century sonatas.