Max Reger

Having started his path into the realm of late romanticism, the German composer experienced the strong influence of Wagner's style. "When at the age of fifteen I heard for the first time Parsifal in Bayreuth, I cried for two weeks and then became a musician," Reger said. But in the bizarre harmony (for the militant Brahmsians and Wagnerians), he is also an ardent adherent of Brahms. It is no accident that his impressive masterful variations on a Haydn theme provided the creative impulse for Reger's variations on Mozart. There was a place of honour in his heart for the classical ideals of music - especially the admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach. The attraction to polyphony, to the old instrumental forms represent the power of his stately organ and piano music (7 fantasies on chorale themes, fantasy and Fugue on the theme BACH, variations and fugues on themes by Bach, Telemann, Beethoven). “I can only think in the language of polyphony,“ the composer noted. “There is no other form more free than the fugue”. Chamber ensembles are his other great passion in the multi-genre palette of his oeuvre. Reger was a professor in composition at the Conservatory in Leipzig, concertizing as pianist and conductor, and managing with great success the Court Symphony Chapel in Meiningen. The two sets of variations of Variations and Fugues on the subjects by Hiller (1907) and Mozart (1914) are the peak of his symphonic oеuvre.