A soul-stirring and passionate programme showcasing musical portraits of some of literature’s most famous characters - the star struck lovers Romeo and Juliet in Prokofiev’s iconic ballet music, and the notorious seducer Don Juan as depicted in Richard Strauss’ tone poem. And in between, the acclaimed NZ violinist Amalia Hall makes her NZSO debut playing award-winning film music, the Chaconne from John Corigliano’s score for The Red Violin.
NZSO Music Director Emeritus, James Judd conducts the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
Don Juan statue in Seville Photo: Anual CC BY-SA 3.0
There are many different versions of the Don Juan story, but the erotic legend walked into Richard Strauss’s life by way of a German play.
At the time the composer was 24 years old and making his own way in the world. Independent from his conservative father, the famous horn player Franz Strauss, Richard began to enjoy his romantic and musical freedom. He fell for Dora, the wife of a cellist friend and after her marriage broke down, they began a passionate affair. The desire he experienced was borne out in this tone poem, a musical storm of pleasure and pain.
In Nikolaus Lenau’s play, the Don leads a life of worthless sensuality. Every triumphant seduction winds up destroying someone or something. Deeply troubled by his many cruelties, Don Juan becomes increasingly reckless until he yearns to die at the hands of an enemy.
At its premiere in Weimar in November 1889, Don Juan scandalized and delighted audiences who were unaccustomed to such graphically suggestive music.
Amalia Hall Photo: Scottie Peng
Soloist Amalia Hall.
Music from John Corigliano’s score to Francois Girard’s 1998 film The Red Violin. It’s probably the acclaimed American composer’s best-known work for which he won an Oscar.
The film was inspired by an historic 18th century Stradivarius violin nicknamed the "Red Mendelssohn", which features a unique red stripe on its top right side. The film concerns a great violin maker named Nicolo Bussotti, based on the real-life luthier Antonio Stradivari, who supposedly mixes the blood of his deceased beloved wife into the varnish of what is to be his most precious creation. And the film follows this infamous and cursed violin as it passes from owner to owner and country to country over three centuries.
Unusually, most of the score was written before the shoot began and not afterwards, as typically happens in the production process. The plot of the film is bound together with a single musical idea – a Chaconne, a Baroque device of a repeated pattern of chords that forms the basis for John Corigliano’s music.
Performed as an encore by Amalia Hall with NZSO.
A production of Romeo & Juliet at Royal Swedish Opera Photo: CC by 3.0
Selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suites, inspired by Shakespeare’s famous play.
It’s a story of star-crossed lovers and doomed passion.
The background to the premiere of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet seems as doomed as the lovers and fraught with as many stumbling blocks as the storyline of Shakespeare’s drama itself. The idea for the ballet was first proposed by the Leningrad Kirov Theatre in 1934, which abruptly canned it (possibly for political reasons), before Prokofiev had even put pen to paper. Prokofiev started afresh on the idea for Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre the following year and completed a first draft of the full score, which was also canned, after the Bolshoi authorities thought the music to be impossible to choreograph and cancelled their agreement.
Determined to salvage something of worth from this wreckage, Prokofiev set about re-casting a selection of his dances into two orchestral suites which were presented during the 1936/1937 season. And a third suite followed in 1946. Another two years down the track the full ballet received its first performance in Czechoslovakia, and finally, in 1940, at the Kirov Theatre.
Despite all trials and tribulations Prokofiev experienced while creating this music, his score is now admired as one of the greatest ballet scores of all time.
Recorded 13 May 2022, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert
Producer: David McCaw
Engineer: Darryl Stack
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