Saul Lilienstein will trace the progression of Wagner’s orchestral inventions from his youthful symphonies and overtures through all the great works which followed.

Young Wagner learned from Beethoven and Weber, but from Lohengrinon there were no models to follow and his fertile imagination took over. With each successive opera he created the state of the art, influencing every major composer of his time and into the 20th century.

A former student of Leonard Bernstein, Saul Lilienstein holds B.A. and M.S.degrees in music from Queens College, N.Y. He initially came to the attention of Maryland audiences as Director of The Handel Choir of Baltimore and the Harford Choral Society. Lilienstein was for many years Artistic Director and Conductor of Maryland’s Harford Opera Theatre and then of Operetta Renaissance in Baltimore, conducting and producing well over fifty operas. A highly regarded Professor of Music, his is a familiar voice at the Smithsonian Institution, Johns Hopkins University in Rockville, at the Goethe Institut, for symphonic concerts at the Kennedy Center, opera lectures for Washington National Opera and recently at music symposia in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Palm Beach. His essays on music have appeared in newspapers throughout the country, in journals and anthologies.