From June 7 to 9, the final concert program of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s regular season took place and it was exhilarating. The program included three of the pieces that made the 20th century a time of tremendous change and, start to finish, the performance was thrilling.
Maestro Jacques Lacombe originally programmed the evening chronologically, with each piece representing a major step in moving music from the Romantic era toward Modernism. On the evening of the performance that I attended, however, we learned that the first act pieces would be reversed–we would hear Claude Debussy’s Concert Suite from the opera “Pelléas et Mélisande” first.
Pelléas et Mélisande” was written in 1902, and the Concert Suite assembled in 1981. Just as Impressionist paintings are less representational and more about the whole, so is Debussy’s music, based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 play. The opera’s basis on Maeterlinck’s Symbolist play makes the music suggestions of feeling without actually stating them. Further, the opera eschews traditional forms and thus flows as one. The Concert Suite flows as well, making for lush, rich music with hints of its progeny, Jazz, which will soon be born, and the idioms float like dandelion florets on a summer breeze.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth and his contributions to modern music are monumental. The Prelude and Liebestod from “Tristan und Isolde” are as lush and rich as Debussy’s music, but with more clarity and direction rather than placid languor. There are a swelling and passionate sweeps of feeling in this story of a love whose ultimate consummation is in death and the Prelude is all Tristan, the longing of youth and the ache of love awaiting birth. Yet the “Liebestod” has a very feminine energy with a different kind of longing … Isolde’s longing is the ache of love awaiting Death, where the lovers will be reunited with no one to come between them. This is grand music, indeed!
Igor Stravinsky’s ballet “Le Sacre du printemps” (The Rite of Spring) is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and this distinctive piece as interpreted by the NJSO was brilliant! Maestro Lacombe conducted the entire program from memory and, considering the Force Majeure this piece represents, that is a Titan’s work. Both my companion and I were hearing this piece performed live for the first time and we both tried to imagine what it would have been like to have only ever heard perhaps some Baroque, but mostly Classical and Romantic works. From the beginning, “Rite” grabs you by the lapels and we agreed it was small wonder there was rioting at the first performance! There is a visceral, primal energy that is erotic and ancient at the same time. The drums call to the limbic brain–the cymbals crash and the symbols fly and the music has an off-kilter feel that sounds like a recital on the Island of Misfit Toys. Compared to Brahms, Beethoven and Mozart, this music is anarchy and chaos with a spicy, piquant sauce and it hearing it live was sublime. This was a big finish to an even bigger season.
What’s next? Why, the traveling NJSO Summer Concerts and the 2013-2014 season of course! The only way to find out about the United States Premiere in store—oops, did I let that slip?!—is to get to www.NJSymphony.org and look at the virtual brochure. Subscriptions are on sale now, so why not give the gift a New World to your Dads and Grads? The time is now.