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Die Walküre, in which the love story and sad fate of the brother and sister Siegmund and Sieglinde becomes spellbinding theatre, is for many listeners the most emotional part of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen. Ever since the Cologne production of the Ring, it has been clear that this music has found ideal interpreters in Markus Stenz and the Gürzenich Orchestra. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger praised the cycle: “The story was told and illustrated with musical instruments; there was suffering and laughter, so that it was sheer pleasure.” Cologne’s General Music Director will conduct a concert performance of Act 1 of Walküre and has engaged an exceptional trio of singers for it: Anja Kampe, the winner of the third International Competition for Wagner Voices in Saarbrücken, Lance Ryan, an “extraordinary Wagner tenor” (Opernwelt) and the deep, dark voice of the seasoned Bayreuth bass Eric Halfvarson.

“The storms of winter have yielded to the month of May,” Siegmund sings in celebration of the approaching spring, which also inspired Robert Schumann, who completed the sketches for his “Spring” Symphony in four days during a creative frenzy in 1841. His First Symphony demonstrates how eloquently Schumann was able to communicate in music with its full palette of romantic emotion – from dreamy softness to wild turbulence to idyllic joy. “I wrote the symphony, if I may say so, in the vernal passion that sways men until they are very old and surprises them again with each year” . . . and still does today.