Kuhlau: Overture William Shakespeare

Day 340

Kuhlau: Overture to the play William Shakespeare

Royal Danish Orchestra

Johan Hye-Knudsen

Kulhau (not to be confused with the baroque composer Kuhnau) is a name which might possibly be familiar to musicians. He turns as as somebody in the extended Beethoven circle, but he is more likely t have been encounter as a composer of easy piano pieces for youngsters. I certainly played one or two of his sonatas when I was learning the piano.

He wrote several operas but this overture is from dramatic music he wrote for a play on the life of Shakespeare. It dates from 1826.  It is a good example of an early romantic overture - the spirit of Beethoven is ever present but there are also hints of Rossini and perhaps Weber. It probably isn’t quite distinctive enough to be regarded as a forgotten masterpiece but is thoroughly enjoyable and well worth hearing. It would be a good concert opener.

Meyerbeer: Struensee - incidental music

Day 305

Meyerbeer: Incidental music to Struensee

NDR Radio Orchestra and Choir

Michail Jurowski

I’ve now reached the first of November and am very pleased not to have missed a day in this project. So for this month I intend to fill more of the gaps in coverage of important composers. I’ve already included more than 300 figures but there are still some notable absentees. Then in December I can do a final wrap up and perhaps chose some more obscure, even quirky figures to bring the project to an end.

I’ve always enjoyed the music of Meyerbeer. It is difficult to appreciate now just how dominant a figure Meyerbeer was throughout the 19th century. I have a poster in my apartment for the 905th performance of Les Huguenots at the Paris opera. This was given in June 1897 - that was only 60 years after the first performance so it gives an idea of how popular the work was - those sorts of statistics could be repeated across all of the major opera houses.

Meyerbeer’s dominant place in the repertory disappears almost overnight after the First World War and never really recovered although there are still occasional performances. At university we put on Robert le Diable. In truth the musical and dramatic demands of the piece were way beyond us but the opera still made a positive impression. I don’t think that anybody has ever bettered Meyerbeer’s mastery of creating lavish spectacle and thrilling musical tableaux.  That’s not to say that he belong at the highest table of operatic composers. The music is uneven, there is a lot of routine ‘painting by numbers’ and he was never good at transition - there are too many really clunky gear changes. Sometimes the melodic invention is weak. But despite all of this his operas are greater than the sum of their parts and are worthy of repeated listening.

This is not an opera but incidental music to a play by the composer’s younger brother. It is scored for full orchestra and male chorus - a reminder that in the 19th century large theatres could call on significant musical resources. It has a long overture - quite serious in tone which might to the blind ear have been thought to be by Schumann and then a series of miscellaneous short movement. These are more varied in tone and some of them are reminiscent of the lighter moments in Meyerbeer such as the dance scenes. 

It is not a masterpiece but neither it is negligible. There is some attractive music here which is well worth listening to. How effective it would be in the theatre is an unknown quantity. The chances of anybody reviving the play with full orchestra and choral forces seems remote. But Meyerbeer was a man of the theatre so I would hazard a guess that it is all worked well in context.

Grieg: Peer Gynt

Day 26

Grieg: Peer Gynt

Soloists

Malmö Chamber Choir

Malmö Symphony Orchestra

Bjarte Engeset 

Peer Gynt: 365 new pieces?

Yes of course I have know the famous pieces from Peer Gynt from school days, but this was an opportunity to listen to the whole of the incidental music. There is about 90 mins worth of music altogether - scored for a full orchestra and choir. It is a reminder that, at least in the largest centres, 19th century audiences would expect that a theatre would have an orchestra on hand, not only to play music before and after the performance but as incidental music. I doubt that there is any theatre anywhere now that could afford to put on a full production of Peer Gynt with the full musical forces that Grieg wrote for.

What an interesting experience to hear the whole thing. I do recall one of my lecturers at university saying that there was much more to Peer Gynt that the suites - it is just a pity that it has taken me the best part of 50 years to discover this for myself!

There is an astonishing variety of music here - some extended scenes and quite a lot of places where the dialogue and music come together in melodrama. Often where other composers have tried this the combination doesn't work, but here Greig paces things so well that it seems the most natural thing in the world. He uses the full panoply of orchestral colour - lots of percussion and plenty of stopped horn effects as just two examples.  Some of the supernatural music is clearly in the tradition of Wagner , Weber and Marschner  (indeed at one point there is a more or less straight lift out of the Flying Dutchman) but elsewhere we are in the world of late-romantic opera and some of the music points forward to the early twentieth century.

What is particular interesting is to hear the familiar excerpts in context. Morning Mood for example comes in the middle of the play and much earlier we hear a folk like almost modal version of the main tune as a hint of what is to come later. The death of Åse is surprisingly moving heard in the distance under dialogue, and the  Hall of the Mountain King takes on another dimension when you hear it with the wild voices that originally came with - the effect is hair raising.

This really was an enjoyable, even revelatory, afternoon's listening. Grieg tends to be looked at as a miniaturist who wrote nice but rather sugar-coated music. Peer Gynt shows just how wrong that view is - this was full blooded dramatic music which really packs a punch.