A beautiful old colorized film of Hans Knappertsbusch leading the Vienna Philharmonic in a performance of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll from a 1963 concert. "Kna" exudes a lovely sense of calm as he conducts.
Watch and listen here.
In 1870, Richard Wagner had married Cosima Liszt von Bülow; she had already borne him a son (their third child), Siegfried, at the Villa Tribschen on Lake Lucerne. "Fidi" was their nickname for the baby, and on the morning of his birth in 1869, the sunrise had created an orange glow on the wall of the Wagner's bedroom.
Cosima's birthday was Christmas Day, and to celebrate her 33rd birthday in 1870, Wagner had arranged secretly for the rehearsals of a new work for small orchestra, called the Siegfried Idyll. On Christmas morning, the musicians gathered on the staircase at Tribschen to serenade Cosima, who wrote in her diary: “As I awoke, my ear caught a sound, which swelled fuller and fuller. . . . Music was sounding, and such music! When it died away, Richard came into my room with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic birthday poem. I was in tears, but so was the rest of the household.”