The Chicago Philharmonic's concert on Sunday at the Music Institute of Chicago will explore music written for Molière's play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, a 1670 satire about the pretensions of members of the bourgeoisie who aspired to live like aristocrats.
This 3:00 p.m. program at the Music Institute's Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston also holds chamber works written by the late Romantic composers Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss.
Actors in costume will present some of the scenes from Molière's famous comedy, in a lively exploration of how the music complements the action onstage. First, the orchestra will play excerpts from Jean Baptiste Lully's original music, performed at the play's premiere in 1670.
Scott Speck, the Philharmonic's new music director, plans to conduct these excerpts the way they were originally directed.
"Lully was the first conductor in history. He conducted by pounding the floor with a staff," Speck said.
This became a common method of keeping time used by other early conductors. "So there was always percussion, even when it wasn't written into the score," Speck continued.
Speck plans to lead the Lully excerpts by pounding the podium with a wooden staff. When asked if there are any advantages to this method of conducting, he laughed and said, "not really, other than presenting an authentic performance."
Speck will put his staff aside and use his baton to lead the orchestra in Strauss' suite Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, based on themes just heard in Lully's music. Actors from Chicago's Court Theatre will perform scenes from the play that lead directly into Strauss' musical interludes.
"The reason this program is called 'Romantic Remix' is because it's based on music that was written for a different purpose," Speck said.
The orchestra will also perform Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll," a chamber work that is based on themes from his opera Siegfried.
Wagner wrote the piece as a birthday gift for his wife, Cosima, in 1870. On the morning of her birthday, a 13-member chamber orchestra played this work on the main staircase of their home, waking Cosima who was sleeping upstairs.
The Chicago Phil will also present a chamber orchestra arrangement of Gustav Mahler's Rückert Lieder, sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Platts. These songs were scored for smaller ensemble by Phillip West. "I much prefer this arrangement to Mahler's original, because it's much more intimate," Speck said.
A chamber arrangement of Mahler's songs should complement the chamber dimensions of the Nichols Concert Hall quite well.
More information about this program is available at chicagophilharmonic.org.
© 2024 Classicalite All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
