The Met Orchestra/ Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Незабываемое завершение концертного сезона в Барбикан состоялось при полном аншлаге и при некончаемых аплодисментах в адрес музыкантов Мет Оркестра, известной колотурной меццо-сопрано Джойс ДиДонато, а также сопрано Энджел Блю и энергичного музыкального руководителя оркестра и дирижера Янника Незе-Сегена. 

 Концерт Met Orchestra посвящен Шекспиру, и открылся он хорошо известной историей о двух юных влюбленных, созданных двумя гением - слова и музыки, Шекспиром и Чайкрвским. 

 вызывающее обморок изображение Чайковского о несчастных влюбленных. Мэтью Окойн сочетает классическую и джазовую гармонии, чтобы описать одну из самых разрушительных трагедий драматурга в Хите («Зарисовки короля Лира»). Влияние Шекспира повсюду: «Троянцы» Берлиоза заимствуют темы из «Венецианского купца». А Верди описывает душераздирающую историю Отелло, с ее гневом и ревностью, и конечно изысканной музыкой, чтобы как можно лучше пронзить сердце.

 

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Fantasy-Overture from Romeo and Juliet Like many of Tchaikovsky’s works, the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture has an autobiographical subtext: the composer’s infatuation – his first and apparently only genuinely romantic heterosexual relationship – with a Belgian soprano named Désirée Artôt in the fall and winter of 1869. Although the 29-year-old composer avowed that he was ‘enraptured’ by Artôt’s ‘gestures and the gracefulness of her movements and her posture,’ the realisation that either he or she would have to make a painful career sacrifice soon put paid to thoughts of marriage. In the aftermath of their short-lived affair, Tchaikovsky transferred his gaze to Shakespeare’s fictional couple. The idea originated with his composer friend Mily Balakirev, fresh from the completion of his own ‘oriental fantasy’ for piano, Islamey. Balakirev not only suggested the concert overture format but provided a detailed musical outline for the piece. Unlike Berlioz’s choral-symphonic Roméo et Juliette, Tchaikovsky’s Shakespearean fantasy is purely orchestral, a symphonic poem in which the drama is conjured by the music rather than emanating from an extra-musical programme. Like Liszt’s Hamlet and Dvořák’s Othello, this Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture distils Shakespeare’s play to its dramatic essence: the tragedy of the star-crossed lovers set against the festering blood-feud between the Montagues and Capulets. If Tchaikovsky’s affair with Artôt lay behind the music he wrote in 1869, his complicated later love life undoubtedly coloured his two subsequent revisions of the score, in 1870 and 1880. The end result was an emotional roller-coaster in free sonata form propelled by the intricate interplay of two contrasting themes, the first violent and sharply syncopated, the second serene and rapturously lyrical. (For good measure, Tchaikovsky added a subsidiary third theme, a series of solemn, hymnlike chords that is usually said to evoke Friar Laurence.) Enhancing the music’s emotive power is the sumptuous orchestration, including a beefed-up brass section and prominent parts for harp and timpani. By the time the work had reached its final form, Tchaikovsky was hatching plans for a full-scale operatic version of Romeo and Juliet. ‘This shall be my definitive work,’ he told his brother Modest. ‘It’s odd how until now I hadn’t seen how I was truly destined to set this drama to music. Nothing could be better suited to my musical character. No kings, no marches, and none of the encumbrances of grand opera – just love, love, love.’ Although the opera remained unfinished, Tchaikovsky recycled music from the Fantasy-Overture in a fragmentary scene that came to light after his death. © Harry Haskell T

First half

Richard Strauss - 4 Lieder, Op. 27: 4. Morgen!

 

Second half

Florence Price – Adoration

(Performed by David Chan, Concertmaster for The Met Orchestra)

 

Very best,