Romeo and Juliet - a Five Star experience

[Guest]

Since it appears that nobody has taken to the PO3 5 day thread, I am taking the liberty of reproducing what I posted this morning on this new thread, specifically devoted to last night's BBCNOW performance. I hope the moderators will allow this little indulgence on my part.

Magnificent Choral Singing

Well, it was worth waiting for the end of the week to hear the full version of Berlioz "Romeo and Juliet"

Most former orchestral musicians will, like myself, have played the orchestral extracts on many occasions but very few will have taken part in a full performance, or even happened to hear it performed.

So for me, Friday Night really was Music Night and it was the chorus work by the BBC NOW Chorus and the Cardiff Polyphonic Choir that was the high spot.
I don't believe that I have ever heard a better-trained and more thrilling sound from a chorus. Credit must go in large part to the Chorus Master who prepared them and to Thiery Fischer who drew the sound out of them.

The orchestra played their part too, of course, but I confess that I was so taken with Berlioz's choral writing that I hardly noticed the soloists - except to say that Mr Lemolu, a splendid bass, did sound a little overpowering as a depiction of the gentle Friar Lawrence.

Well, I've played the overtures, I've played for Prokofiev's ballet with the Bolshoi at Covent Garden and now I've heard the full Berlioz choral version.

It was a great night. Try to catch it on "Listen Again"

VH

[PatrickBrompton]

Excellent orchestral playing – highly idiomatic. Jonathan Lemalu was fine if you like an extremely wide vibrato!

The best choral singing, I thought, came from the ‘petit choeur’ in the early movements; the Mab ‘Scherzetto’, especially for a live performance, was as crisp as you are ever likely to hear. The sound of the full chorus was excellent, but the tumultuous effect of ‘Mais notre sang rougit leur glaive’, for example, owed something to imprecision rather than Berlioz’s score – but that, properly considered, is an essential part of the live concert experience.

[BBMmk2]

Yes, i heard the last part. So willo listen more concertatedly on iplayer later today. I think the BBCPO are problaly the best orchestra the BBC has!

[salymap]

I'm very fond of Berlioz' music so must listen tomorrow on iPlayer, if it is behaving. I know the excerpts that are played but have never heard this complete version.

VH How interesting to have played for the Bolshoi.

[Chris Newman]

I have two wonderful full versions with Colin Davis and a third with Pierre Monteux (well, it was actually the first I ever heard and came on LPs as part of my sub to the 1960s World Record Club and I now have it on CDs). Because I enjoyed it so much I went to Colin's RFH account which led to the Philips' recording. I also have a superb Giulini version of the orchestral bits. The full version with voices is shamefully neglected. Lovely stuff.

Thank you for the tip-off. I must catch it.

[arundodo]

The BBCPO may or may not be the best orchestra the BBC has. However the orchestra that played on Friday night, was in fact, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (based in Cardiff) under their Principal Conductor, Thierry Fischer.

[french frank]

The BBCPO may or may not be the best orchestra the BBC has. However the orchestra that played on Friday night, was in fact, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (based in Cardiff) under their Principal Conductor, Thierry Fischer.

Indeed it was. The OP did get it right (and welcome to the forum!).

[Sydney Grew]

Ho ho! We upon reading the title naturally assumed that this thread was going to be about Pyotr's magnificent Fantasie-Overture. All the other efforts - by Berlioz, Gounod, Prokofieff, Sutermeister, Zandonai, Zingarelli, Bellini and Blacher - pale in comparison and none of those merits the designation "five-star." Of course it has to be emphasized - what is so often forgotten - that Tchaikoffsky's work was inspired by his homo-sexualistic experience - that is the essential difference. (And what about Shakespeare himself? - We as have so many others wonder . . . )

[Ventilhorn]

Ho ho! We upon reading the title naturally assumed that this thread was going to be about Pyotr's magnificent Fantasie-Overture. All the other efforts - by Berlioz, Gounod, Prokofieff, Sutermeister, Zandonai, Zingarelli, Bellini and Blacher - pale in comparison and none of those merits the designation "five-star." Of course it has to be emphasized - what is so often forgotten - that Tchaikoffsky's work was inspired by his homo-sexualistic experience - that is the essential difference. (And what about Shakespeare himself? - We as have so many others wonder . . . )

Why do you have to introduce a person's sexual preferences into a discussion about an orchestra's performance?

We had ernough of that on the old BBC Message boards.

If that is all that you have to say about Last Friday's performance by the BBCNOW and chorus, you are on the wrong thread (and totally out of order)

Please take your muck raking elsewhere - it has no place in music or amongst musicians.

Ventilhorn

[Sydney Grew]

Sorry if you did not care for my honest reaction, but it did attempt to make a very relevant point, which is this:

Romeo and Juliet has long been taken as a glorification of heterosexual love has it not? Take the love away and there is not much left to Berlioz's work. It was his inspiration! Pretty well his whole reason for writing the thing! Can't keep quiet about that when we discuss that broadcast oh no!

Similarly Tchaikoffsky's work of the same name was inspired by a love of a very different kind - it was his whole reason for writing the thing! As I said. And certainly not . . . what you said!

But yes, let us now drop that and go back to the subject of Berlioz, and to something rather more technical than spiritual. Marx in his well-known book makes the following claim in regard to the thrust of Berlioz's instrumental innovations:

"The second noticeable feature of the new orchestra is the emasculation of the trumpet and French horn (even the trombone has been thus maltreated) by means of valves and pistons. When we cease to aim at truth, we also cease to discern and appreciate that which is characteristic; for every character is satisfied with, and true to, itself; it tries to be, and to appear, nothing else but what it really is. Now there are in the entire series of tonal personification no characters of a more decided cast than the heroic trumpet and the enthusiastic horn, as they appear in their natural condition. The peculiar character of these instruments, and even the very defectiveness of their compass, has never failed to lead the penetrating composer to more or less characteristic turns and combinations, and often rewarded his faithful adherence to Nature with deeply interesting results. It was sufficient to drag these children of Nature out of their original sphere of sound, and convert them into cosmopolitan creatures by depriving them of all their innocent peculiarities, in order to entangle the perpetrators in a maze of half truth and half falsehood. The introduction of valves has, undoubtedly, completed and expanded the scale; but the new notes are mostly impure, the natural notes have lost their characteristic clearness and peculiar colouring, and the sonorous power of the instruments is broken. . . .

"The employment of the new choruses of brass-instruments, in the manner in which they are used at present, must appear not only suggestive of serious considerations, but, indeed, generally pernicious. For the introduction of these instruments, together with the valve trumpets and horns, has the effect of obliterating almost every trace of character, and causing the most effective orchestral contrasts to disappear. And this general result is of far greater moment than the advantages gained for special purposes."

Thus Marx (his own emphasis) on Berlioz, in his Music of the Nineteenth Century and its Culture, pages 69 and 70 - it may readily be found on the Inter-Web. I wonder how much Berlioz's instrumental influence differed in the orchestras of the different European countries, giving them their different characteristic sounds?

[Ventilhorn]

Sorry if you did not care for my honest reaction, but it did attempt to make a very relevant point, which is this:

Romeo and Juliet has long been taken as a glorification of heterosexual love has it not? Take the love away and there is not much left to Berlioz's work. It was his inspiration! Pretty well his whole reason for writing the thing! Can't keep quiet about that when we discuss that broadcast oh no!

Elsie Muchgodery by any other name is still the obsessive trouble maker who caused a lot of havoc on the old BBC message boards.

I object most strongly to your attempt to hijack a thread which was started solely to the performance by the BBCNOW on Friday's PO3 to expound your theories on the motivational characteristics of composers and playwrites.

I suggest that you start your own thread if you wish to indulge yourself(selves) in this sort of discourse and leave this thread to those whose replies are concerned only with the subject of Romeo and Juliet as broadcast by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on Friday. 15th April.

I will certainly complain to the moderators if you continue to interfere with this thread for your own purposes.

vh

[3rd Viennese School]

Why does Berlioz R and J have a happy ending? sort of ruins it.

(I know Prokofiev nearly had a happy ending but I expect they were made to do that in Stalin's Russia)

3VS

[vinteuil]

Why does Berlioz R and J have a happy ending? sort of ruins it.


3VS

well, Romeo and Juliette are still both dead by the end, so it's not that happy...

Berlioz will have known the Garrick version, in which Juliet wakes up from the drug to see the not-yet-dead Romeo before dying ("Reveil de Juliette - Joie délirante - désespoir, dernières angoisses et mort des deux amants"). Berlioz was so personally invested in this work - from his coup de foudre seeing Harriet Smithson as Juliet all those years before [1827?] - that the 'redemptive' ending with Fr Laurence preaching reconciliation between m'tagus and capulets somehow seems a good way to round it off...

[Sydney Grew]

A few words in orientation about this "Dramatic Symphony" may be of assistance to Members. Firstly, the B.B.C. on their web-site tells us this: "A rare Parisian performance of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with Harriet Smithson as Juliet shook the young Berlioz to the core of his being. He didn't rest until he had married Harriet and set the play to music. The result is this great symphony, full of fantasy, orchestral wizardry and wild unbridled romance. It is one of Berlioz's most extravagant works and one which had a profound effect on composers from Wagner, Tchaikosvy and Mahler. Even today, any performance is still an event."

The orthography "Tchaikosvy" is the B.B.C.'s own, which I have not seen before.

And then as the broadcast began the announcer told us this: "The performances of the Irish actress Harriet Smithton as Juliet inflamed Berlioz, so that he fell desperately in love with her and married her a few years later. Berlioz understood no English but was completely overwhelmed by the heady atmosphere of the play, intensified no doubt by his feelings for Harriet. The drama of that immense love, swift as thought, burning as lava, radiantly pure as an angel's [sic] glance, the raging hatreds, the wild ecstatic kisses, the desperate strife of love and death - it was too much."

Thus our B.B.C. announcer. Is it just me or is the word "gush" called for in this context?

And next the composer himself tells us something about his plan and method: "Do not be mistaken about the genre of this work. Although it makes much use of voices, it is nonetheless neither a concert opera nor a cantata, but a symphony with choruses.

"Although song plays a part in it almost from the start, that is in order to prepare the mind of the listener for the dramatic scenes, whose feelings and passions have to be expressed by the orchestra. And it is also in order to introduce little by little into the musical development the choral masses, which were they to appear too suddenly could destroy the unity of the composition. That is why the Prologue, in which, following the example of Shakespeare himself, the chorus sets out the course of the action, is sung by only fourteen voices. In the distance (off-stage) the male-only chorus of the Capulets may be heard; then in the funeral service both the male and female Capulets. At the start of the Finale come the two full choruses of Capulets and Montagus with Father Laurence; and at the end all three choruses together.

"This final scene of reconciliation of the two families is the only one that belongs in the domain of opera or oratorio. Never since the time of Shakespeare has it been represented upon any stage; but it is too beautiful, too musical, and it crowns so well a work of this nature, for the composer to have dreamed of treating it otherwise.

"When, in the famous garden and graveyard scenes, the dialogue of the two lovers, Juliet's asides, and the passionate energy of Romeo, are not sung, and when the duets of love and despair are relegated to the orchestra, the reasons are numerous and easy to understand. First of all - and this reason would of itself suffice to justify the composer - it is because this is a symphony and not an opera. And then, duets of this kind having already been treated vocally thousands of times by the greatest masters, it was both prudent and interesting to attempt a different mode of expression. It is precisely because the sublimity of this love makes its delineation so dangerous for the musician, that he has been obliged to give his fantasy a latitude which the literal sense of the words sung would not have permitted him, and to return to a language of instruments, a language richer, more varied, more fluid, and - precisely because of its vagueness - incomparably more powerful in such a case." Thus H. Berlioz.

So it is clear that there is not really a lot of choral work, but much for the orchestra (which sounded very competent in this recording) to do.

Weingartner too says a little about this work which may be of interest: "Berlioz's purpose was to open up new ways of expression for his energetic musical soul, - to create music, and music the most beautiful, most ingenious of which he was capable. He did not consider whether the form he chose was artistically justified. It is but a style-less mixture of different forms; not quite oratorio, not quite opera, not quite symphony - fragments of all three, and nothing perfect. In Romeo and Juliet a fugato pictures the strife between the two hostile houses, a long recitative for the orchestra, the meeting, interference and threats of the prince. Little choruses and solos tell of the unhappy lot of the lovers, of the power of love, of Queen Mab; great orchestral pieces depict the ball at Capulet's house, the love scene, and again Queen Mab. Thus this little episode, so unimportant in the drama, is brought in twice, while the tragic conflict, on the contrary, is entirely omitted. A chorus piece illustrates the lament of the women over Juliet's supposed death; an orchestral piece, without a vocal part, paints the awakening and tragic end of the lovers; finally, a thoroughly operatic finale describes the gathering of the crowd, Father Lawence's sermon, and the reconciliation of the rival houses. Berlioz chooses the situations which seem to him best suited for musical composition, without any regard for the organic connection of the whole. . . . but the excrescence — if I may so call it — in Romeo and Juliet, the episode of Queen Mab, has given us a wonderfully fantastic orchestral scherzo, absolutely unique of its kind. In this work are also marvels of ingenious and remarkable music. I may mention the feast at Capulet's house, and the magnificent and passionate love scene." Thus F. Weingartner.

The B.B.C. says the work inspired Mahler and I can see what they mean - particularly in some of his earlier symphonies the younger man seems to have got similarly carried away does he not.

The complete score as a single PDF file is available to "down-load" here and can be of considerable assistance when following the flow or progress of the work:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Rom%C3%A9o_et_Juliette,_symphony,_H_79_%28Berlioz,_Hector%29

[vinteuil]

My thanks to Sydney Grew for the illuminating and instructive quotations from Berlioz and Weingartner - most helpful.

And to answer the query in Mr Grew's fourth para - yes, "gush" seems to me to be just the right word.