Music Moment

For the 150th anniversary of the first complete Ring festival in Bayreuth, we’re taking a look at some of the most memorable reactions, reviews and anecdotes surrounding those early performances. From astonished first impressions to sharp-tongued criticism, from logistical headaches to the unpredictable realities of live theater, these stories remind us that even the grandest artistic visions don’t always go according to plan.

Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen was first performed in its entirety at Bayreuth in 1876. It remains a powerful and influential work 150 years later, with Wagner’s vision continuing to inspire artists, audiences, and opera companies—including Seattle Opera and Tacoma Opera in the Pacific Northwest.

Johann Strauss, Jr. was born in an outlying district of Vienna two centuries ago, on October 25, 1825. His music has been celebrated at the annual New Year’s concerts given by the Vienna Philharmonic since 1939. Champagne glasses at the ready, then. Let’s raise a toast to the immortal “Waltz King.”

Quick: name a classical music composer. Chances are, the first names that come up are not women. Now there’s a new database that opens up centuries of women composers, linking their names to stories, performing scores, and recordings

You’ve heard so much about the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, but there were daughters, too.Bach was 23, and his wife Maria Barbara was 24, when the first of their children was born. They named her Catherina Dorothea. CD grew into a singer, and helped out in her father’s music work. Fifteen years passed, her mother died, her father remarried, and finally, CD Bach acquired a sister: Cristina Sophia Henrietta, daughter of Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach. CSH died at the age of three, just as another sister, Elizabeth Juliana Frederica, was born. EJF Bach would grow up to marry one of her father’s students.

James DePreist was a gifted communicator whether speaking, writing, or conducting. He is the subject of this “Music Moment” from NWPB Classical.

Twenty-five years ago, Angèle Dubeau had a thriving career as a concert violinist, having studied with the legendary Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School in New York. She had become a popular broadcaster at home in Québec, where she hosted a weekly French-language program on CBC. She already had her Arthur (as she calls her prized Stradivarius violin), but she envisioned an all-Canadian, all-female ensemble.

Claudio José Brindis de Salas y Garrido. A renowned violinist, born in Cuba in 1852. A contemporary journalist described his playing, and the effect it had on his listeners. “His eyes sparkled. His fingers multiplied…reaching into the deep nerves of the melody…leading a rapt audience to drunken emotion.”

Nettie Asberry opened many doors in her lifetime, including her own. Her teaching and her activism left an indelible mark on the Northwest.

A 24-year-old New York man packed a Jeep with some essentials and a few cans of gas and made his way across Arizona in 1916. The man, Ferde Grofé, arrived at his destination after dark, unaware that his life was about to change with the sunrise of the next day.