ESA-PEKKA SALONEN
Witches, ghouls, and ghosts abound in this wonderfully wicked concert led by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique paints scenes of lavish beauty and ghastly visions, while pianist Bertrand Chamayou takes on the devilish charm of Franz Liszt’s Totentanz. Listen for the frightful sounds of supernatural beings as they dance deep into the night in Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.
Illustration by Heather Vaughn.
Many a dark and stormy night thundered through the years of the Romantic era, which took form in the late 18th century in literature and painting and erupted in full force in the first half of the 19th. Among the Romantic obsessions were themes involving supernatural beings, unhinged psychologies, and imminent dread; think of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) at one end of the century and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) at the other. Romantic composers added their voices to the aesthetic.
Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain depicts a witches’ sabbath on St. John’s Eve, the summer solstice celebrated in Slavic cultures, with deep roots in the pagan past. The piece was “civilized” in a heavy revision by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, but today we hear Mussorgsky’s original, wilder intentions.
The Dies irae chant, which figures in the Roman Catholic liturgy of the Mass for the Dead, is used in both Franz Liszt’s Totentanz and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Liszt attended that work’s premiere in 1830 and encountering morbid frescoes in Italy added further impetus for him to write this Dance of Death, a virtuosic work for piano and orchestra that unrolls through variations on the haunting melody.
In the psychedelic expanses of Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz imagines being in love and poisoning himself with opium. He has a vision in which he kills his beloved, is sentenced to death, and then parties with witches and demons alongside the now-fallen girl.
Program
Night on Bald Mountain
Symphonie fantastique
THESE CONCERTS ARE GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY THE MATTHEW KELLY FAMILY FOUNDATION.
BERTRAND CHAMAYOU’S APPEARANCE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE SHENSON YOUNG ARTIST FUND.
Conductor
Piano
Born in Toulouse, Mr. Chamayou’s musical talent was noticed by pianist Jean-François Heisser, who later became his professor at the Paris Conservatory. He completed his training with Maria Curcio in London.
Mr. Chamayou makes his San Francisco Symphony debut this week and is a Shenson Young Artist. He has appeared with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, London Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Rotterdam Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Atlanta Symphony. Oher engagements include the Mostly Mozart Festival, Lucerne Festival, Salzburg Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival, and Beethovenfest Bonn, and he is a regular performer at Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Lincoln Center, Herkulessaal Munich, and London’s Wigmore Hall. As a chamber musician, his frequent collaborators include Renaud Capuçon, Gautier Capuçon, Quatuor Ébène, Antoine Tamestit, and Sol Gabetta.
Mr. Chamayou’s recording of Saint-Saëns’s piano concertos won the Gramophone Recording of the Year Award in 2019 and he has been awarded France’s Victoires de la Musique on four occasions. He has an exclusive recording contract with Warner/Erato and was awarded the 2016 Echo Klassik for his recording of Ravel’s complete works for solo piano. Last June he released a new recording of Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus and performed it at Festival Ravel, a new series situated in France’s Basque country of which Chamayou is co-artistic director.
10/2022
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