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Robert Moody’s Finale-Concert of 2010
Sneak Peek …read more
This will be an afternoon as uplifting as any you’ve ever experienced.
You will adore Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
The Orchestra’s national-powerhouse French Horn section will shine in the first movement of Schumann’s Concertstuck in F.
Next the Washington Post said this when the National Symphony premiered Mason Bates’ Liquid Interface: “It surpassed, in sheer sonic beauty, even the works of Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky that rounded out that performance.”
Then the Maestro raises the bar further with Berlioz’s dramatic Symphonie Fantastique. The New York Philharmonic launched its current season with this masterwork; Robert Moody will create similar magic for you…if you’re wise enough to attend his Finale.
Premium Seating available in the orange areas of the seating chart below.
Liquid Interface by Mason Bates
Mason Bates performs his “electronica”, that is on his laptop and a drum pad. Take a good look at the orchestra! You will see an unusual group of instruments, consisting of cymbals, a wind machine, xylophone, vibraphone, harmonicas, a washboard and spoon; all joining woodwinds, tympani, and strings to present Water in all its forms, its powers, its beauty. The actual sounds of a Glacier Calving opens this masterful four-scene composition. The Scherzo Liquado, Crescent City and On the Wanamsee will draw you further into this vast world of water and its many transformations.
Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz
Huge, Dramatic, the very first Program Symphony! Obsessive love from afar translated into magnificent instrumental colors by Berlioz, the master of orchestration. “Fantastic” is indeed the operative word for this opium induced, five dream “episode in the life of an artist.”
Hector Berlioz
Imagine the young French composer, Hector Berlioz, attending a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Imagine this new voice of early 19th Century Romantic Music admiring a most attractive Irish actress in the role of Ophelia! Imagine his admiration turning to obsessive love! This extraordinary passion became the inspiration for an even more extraordinary composition, Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique. The piece will be performed by the Arizona Musicfest All-Star Orchestra as the stirring final work of their four-concert series on Sunday afternoon, February 28.
Berlioz used the subtitle, “Episodes in the Life of An Artist” to describe his five movement episodic composition. Was this artist Berlioz? Be sure of it! The artist, in a drug induced state, dreams of Harriet Smithson, the actress. Berlioz calls each of the five scenes a “movement.” The title of the work uses the word Symphonie, But, this is not the Classical Symphony form of Mozart or even that of Beethoven’s larger scaled works. Berlioz introduces the use of an “Idee Fixe,” his term for a repeated identifying theme. This use of a motif as a representation of an idea or person is the beginning of a new genre in musical composition, “Program Music.”
The “idee fixe” is Harriet’s theme and appears in all of the movements. We hear it dreamy in the first “Reverie,” bucolic, with stunning English Horn and Oboe orchestration in a Country setting, wispy and dancey in the Ball scene, relentless in the “March to the Gallows,” as the artist dreams he has murdered his love and, finally, grotesquely distorted in “A Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” where it is paired with the bassoon and tuba as they introduce “Dies Irae,” the “Day of Judgment” theme. It is Berlioz’ skilled mastery of orchestration that is the very heart of this piece. Listen to the Woodwinds. Listen to the Tympani and Brass distort it! Listen to the axe fall in the “Gallows” movement!
Oh, by the way…Berlioz, fixated and passionate, so representative of the emotionally charged Romantic Period of the 1830’s, married his romantic ideal, Harriet, some four years after he saw her perform as Ophelia and after he had composed his musical reaction to his infatuation. His infatuation from afar proved to have a much better result. The marriage was a failure. Symphonie Fantastique, the work of Berlioz’ imagination, remains a smashing hit!
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