St Petersburg, Concert Hall

Sibelius. Respighi. Berlioz


The Mariinsky Orchestra
Conductor: Christian Knapp


PROGRAMME:
Jean Sibelius
Lemminkäinen’s Return, symphonic legend Op. 22

Ottorino Respighi
Belkis, regina di Saba, symphonic suite

Hector Berlioz
Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14

The four-movement Lemminkäinen suite (1893–1896) brought Sibelius fame in Europe and internationally. Here the compose turned to the merriest and most life-enthralled hero of the Finnish national epos The Kalevala. Lemminkäinen is a brave warrior and irresistible enchanter of women’s hearts, who with his wit recalls to mind another beloved musical character – Till Eulenspiegel. The symphonic legends that form the suite are generally performed separately.
The first three movements of the suite tell of Lemminkäinen – a shepherd on the island of Saari who enchants girls with his singing and dancing and Tuonela, the Land of the Dead. Tuonela is washed by a river, but the majestic Tuonela Swan swims on its dark rivers. The hero woos the daughter of the cruel Queen Pohjola in the north. Unable to fulfil one of Pohjola’s wishes – to shoot the Swan of Tuonela – Lemminkäinen dies. On hearing the news, his mother descends to the underworld and, recovering her son’s body, breathes new life into him.
Lemminkäinen’s Return (1895, second version 1900) is the triumphant finale of the suite in major key. Tired of campaigns and battles and having undergone all possible adventures, Lemminkäinen returns to his homeland where he is reminded of his childhood.
The brief and lively outer movements of the suite contrast with the sad and gloomy images of the inner slow passages. The severity of the musical form of the work as a whole is achieved thanks to the unity of melodic intonations imbued in Karelian and Finnish folklore.

The name of Ottorino Respighi is connected with the renaissance of instrumental music in Italy following more than a century and a half of opera’s dominance.
Respighi graduated from the Music Lyceum of Bologna in violin in 1900 and moved to Russia where he became a concert master with the Italian Opera in St Petersburg. In 1901 for half a year he took lessons in composition from Rimsky-Korsakov. “I did not produce many,” Respighi recalled, “but for me they were very important.” One year later he was attending Max Bruch’s composition class in Berlin.
World renown came to Respighi following the premiere of his symphonic poem Fontane di Roma (1917). The subsequent poems Pini di Roma (1924) and Feste romane (1929) produced the symphony trilogy that won Respighi fame as one of the great maestri of coloristic sound and an outstanding connoisseur of the orchestra.
No less than a third of the composer’s creative legacy comprises transcriptions, arrangements and free compositions on themes by known and anonymous composers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as composers of the Baroque era. Respighi also wrote several operas and ballets, symphony suites, chamber instrumental works, romances and song cycles.
The ballet Belkis, rena di Saba (1931) is one of Respighi’s final works for musical theatre. In accordance with the Biblical tale, the Queen of Sheba – the legendary queen of the Arabian Kingdom – on discovering the wisdom and fame of Solomon the King of Israel “came to prove him with hard questions... And the Queen of Sheba saw all of Solomon’s wisdom.” Many Christian authors believe the arrival of the Queen of Sheba with gifts to Solomon to be a “prototype” for the Three Wise Men’s coming to Jesus Christ. The story of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon’s curse is also present in the Koran, and there are legends of the Queen in Hebrew tradition. In European culture this plot has seen diverse embodiments – in literature, painting and music (particularly Handel’s oratorio Solomon and Gounod’s opera La Reine de Saba).
The ballet was staged at the Teatro alla Scala in 1932 and met with an enthusiastic response from the public. The success of the production led to Respighi producing an orchestral suite from the ballet music (1934). The ballet music has a distinct oriental character and at times is reminiscent of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Schéhérazade (a tribute to his honoured teacher!): the score combines a refined picturesque quality with cruel brutality.

“A huge symphonic composition in a new genre, by means of which I shall attempt to make a great impression on my audience,” was how Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) described the score of his Symphonie fantastique  (1830), a clear manifesto of musical romanticism. The  composer was not relying on the imagination of his audience, which had learned the classicist model of the symphony – from Haydn to Beethoven. And as well as the titles of the movements of the Symphonie fantastique he gave it a well-developed literary programme in which autobiographical motifs are reflected: the story of the young composer’s passionate love for the Irish Harriet Smithson, prima donna of an English theatre company on tour in Paris.
In following the programme, the attentive listener will not miss the details of the plot of this musical “novella”, brilliantly brought to life by means of the symphony orchestra. The  central image of the symphony, its idé fixe, is the theme of love which cements together the entire cycle. It appears in various forms – ranging from the dreamlike contours of a beautiful and desirable woman in the first three movements to grotesque and caricature in the final two. The  Symphonie fantastique was first performed in Paris on 5 December 1830 under the baton of the composer.
Iosif Raiskin

Age category 6+

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