NZSO: Spirit

BERLIOZ: Le Corsaire, Overture

Hector Berlioz Photo: Public Domain

With a swashbuckling opening that conductor Hans von Bülow likened to “a shot from a pistol,” 'Le Corsaire' encapsulates not only the emotional extremes so prevalent in Romantic music, but also the adventurous spirit of the
pirate.

Although Berlioz at one point named the overture Le corsair rouge, after James Fenimore Cooper’s nautical
adventure novel The Red Rover, Berlioz later shortened the overture’s name to Le Corsaire, a clear reference
to Lord Byron’s long poem of the same name.

Berlioz deeply admired the poem, “I followed the Corsair in his desperate adventures; I adored that inexorable yet tender nature - pitiless, yet generous - a strange combination of apparently contradictory feelings; love of woman, hatred of his kind.”

'Le Corsaire' personifies these contradictions. The driving energy of the opening is interrupted by a tender and serene Adagio, an oasis of calm, before the work plunges back into the flurrying onrush of the opening and a galloping coda. (Notes: NZSO)

Recorded 6 August 2020, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert

Producer: David McCaw

Engineer: Darryl Stack

MAHLER: Songs of a Wayfarer

Simon O'Neill with NZSO & Hamish McKeich Photo: Screenshot NZSO/Latitude Creative

Gustav Mahler was 24 years old when he wrote these songs and he’d just been through a painful breakup. Over the winter months he transformed his journey from pain to acceptance into the text and the music of these four songs.

The 'Songs of a Wayfarer' follow the emotional and physical journey of a distraught young man who sets out to find himself in the aftermath of a shattered affair, eventually finding shelter and a measure of peace under the blossom-laden boughs of a Linden tree.

• Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht (When My Sweetheart is Married)
• Ging heut' Morgen über's Feld (I Went This Morning over the Field)
• Ich hab' ein glühend Messer (I Have a Gleaming Knife)
• Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz (The Two Blue Eyes of my Beloved)

Recorded 6 August 2020, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert

Producer: David McCaw

Engineer: Darryl Stack

Six Songs by Richard Strauss

Simon O'Neill Photo: Screenshot NZSO/Latitude Creative

• Allerseelen Op 10 No 8 (orch. Robert Heger)
• Ruhe, meine Seele Op 27 No 1 (orch. Richard Strauss)
• Cäcilie Op 27 No 2 (orch. Richard Strauss)
• Heimliche Aufforderung Op 27 No 3 (orch. Robert Heger)
• Morgen Op 27 No 4 (orch. Richard Strauss)
• Zueignung Op 10 No 1 (orch. Robert Heger)

Simon O'Neill begins and ends this selection with two of Richard Strauss's early songs, from his Opus 10.

Allerseelen (All Souls’ Day) describes a lover entreating another to talk of their past love… with a hint that one of the pair might be dead.

Zueignung (Dedication) is similarly bittersweet, with the singer intoning “Liebe macht die Herzen krank” (Love makes the heart sick).

The four songs of Opus 27 were inspired by Strauss's love for his wife, the soprano Pauline de Ahna, and were given to her on their wedding day.

Recorded 6 August 2020, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert

Producer: David McCaw

Engineer: Darryl Stack

PROKOFIEV: Symphony No 5 in B flat Op 100

'I conceived it as a symphony on the greatness of the human soul' ~ Sergei Prokofiev

Hamish McKeich Photo: Tracy Valarie

When Sergei Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony premiered in 1945, audiences in the USSR and the USA heard music which filled them with hope. As the orchestra’s CEO Peter Biggs reminds us, “we still have a long way to go in battling a pandemic and wrestling with many uncertainties it has created but listening to Prokofiev’s optimistic music reminds us to never give up".

During the fateful summer of 1944 when Prokofiev was composing this work, though the Second World War was still raging, the tide had turned in the Allies’ favour. The Soviets were gradually pushing back the Nazis from their borders, and the US and British Allies had landed on the beaches of Normandy in June. An uplifting symphony expressing the greatness of humanity would have been both a balm and an encouragement to battered Russian souls.

Prokofiev was perhaps the greatest melodist of his time, and this symphony is full of his uniquely beautiful melodies, beginning simply, with a lyrical melody shared by the flute and bassoon.

But, like Shostakovich, Prokofiev also composed under the Stalinist regime and was censored and censured. His Fifth Symphony was one of the few works not condemned though, and eventually sanctions against Prokofiev’s music were reversed and even Stalin capitulated, awarding Prokofiev the Stalin Prize in 1951.

Recorded 6 August 2020, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert

Producer: David McCaw

Engineer: Darryl Stack