Interview
Konstantia Gourzi on working with Claudio Abbado Claudio Abbado’s last concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker
In his final concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker in May 2013, Claudio Abbado once again presented a fascinating programme which included two portrayals of dreams that could hardly be more different: Felix Mendelssohn’s perfectly balanced music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hector Berlioz’s wildly unbridled Symphonie fantastique, a contrast which reveals not least the diversity and richness of musical Romanticism.
This final encounter between conductor and orchestra reveals Abbado’s musical curiosity and openness, as he performs Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with the Berliner Philharmoniker for the first time. The programme also includes Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The juxtaposition of these works is also a fascinating idea as it throws into relief the early period of musical Romanticism. The two composers met for the first time in Rome in 1832. Berlioz was full of admiration for Mendelssohn, who for his part had difficulty putting up with Berlioz’s effusive behaviour, “this enthusiasm turned inside out, this desperation as presented to the ladies, this ingeniousness printed in Gothic type.” And the Symphonie fantastique alienated him. Particularly in the final Witch’s Sabbath, Mendelssohn saw “utter foolishness, contrived passion […] mere grunting, shouting, screaming back and forth.”
His Midsummer Night’s Dream music, in which he congenially set the material of Shakespeare’s play to music, shows us his own ideal of Romantic composition. The overture from 1826 – a stroke of genius on the part of the 17-year old composer – captures the atmosphere and flavour of the world of the fairy kingdom in which the royal couple Oberon and Titania reign. In 1843, Mendelssohn followed up with 12 additional musical pieces, commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia for a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the New Palace in Potsdam. The results were a collection of instrumental, vocal and melodrama pieces, of which the Wedding March is probably the most famous. 1843 was also the year the composers met once again when Berlioz conducted the Symphonie fantastique in Leipzig. After an initial distance, they gradually began to understand each other better and better – culminating in a highly symbolic scene, when Berlioz and Mendelssohn exchanged their batons as mutual mementos.
Berliner Philharmoniker
Claudio Abbado
© 2013 Berlin Phil Media GmbH
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