Toledo Symphony

Description:

One of the most elegantly poised pieces of the Classical era is juxtaposed with a Symphony brimming over with intoxication, nightmares and Romantic excess.

Guest conductor Yoav Talmi, the Artistic Director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, makes his return to the Toledo Symphony with one of his own compositions, an original paraphrase based on Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro overture.  Concertmaster Kirk Toth and Principal Violist Valentin Ragusitu perform one of Mozart’s noblest creations – his Sinfonie Concertante for violin and viola.  

Maestro Talmi brings significant experience with Berlioz to the French composer’s Symphonie fantastique, having recorded an all-Berlioz cycle on the Naxos label.  The Symphonie fantastique traces the journey of a sentimental young composer and his unrequited love affair with a beautiful woman – traditionally associated with Berlioz himself and the Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson.  Though Berlioz and Smithson had quite a stormy relationship themselves, including suicide attempts and murder threats, they have nothing on this vivid and dramatic score, which steers the audience through pastoral scenes, a fancy-dress ball, and a march to the scaffold complete with execution.   The final movement, a “Witches’ Sabbath,” with its brilliant orchestration, is one of the most revolutionary orchestral pieces of the Romantic era and decades ahead of its time.


Points of interest:

• The Symphonie fantastique is regarded as the first program symphony, a large-scale orchestral work that tells a definite story without the use of words.  
• Three years after the première of the Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz and Smithson were married.  Among those in attendance were composer Franz Liszt and poet Heinrich Heine.
• Mozart’s Sinfonie concertante is the only string concerto for which Mozart wrote cadenzas (solo passages without orchestra that, in Mozart’s time, were usually improvised by the performers), presumably because it would have been somewhat more difficult for the two instrumentalists to improvise collectively.   This piece is also noteworthy for the prominence it gives the solo viola.  Though Mozart is famous for his virtuosity as a keyboard player and violinist, he also played the viola, and often preferred the viola to the violin during informal chamber music sessions.

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Program:

Talmi                       The Double Marriage of Figaro    9’

Mozart                    Sinfonia concertante in E-Flat Major    31’
                                    Allegro maestoso
                                    Andante
                                    Presto

Intermission

Berlioz                   Symphonie fantastique    50’      
                                    I.    Rêveries, Passions
                                        (Reveries and passions)
                                    II.    Un bal
                                        (A Ball)
                                    III. Scène aux champs
                                        (Scene in the country)
                                    IV. Marche au supplice
                                        (March to the scaffold)
                                    V.    Songe d’une nuit du sabbat
                                        (Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath)
           


WGTE – FM 91 broadcasts the Toledo Symphony on FM 91 In Concert.  Tonight’s concert will be rebroadcast Thursday, August 7, 2008, at 8:00 p.m. through the generosity of the Edward H. Schmidt Musical Arts Fund.

A preconcert lecture with Dr. Melvin Harsh will be held at 7 p.m. onstage at the Peristyle both nights.

Media Sponsor for the Classics Series is WSPD Newsradio 1370 AM.

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