Archived event
Performance details
Thursday 10 October 2024 at 7.30pm
Saturday 12 October 2024 at 2pm
Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Featuring
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Fabien Gabel conductor
Alexandra Dariescu piano
Program
Debussy (arr. Altinoglu) Pelléas and Mélisande: Suite
C. Schumann Piano Concerto
Wagner Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod
R. Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten: Symphonic Fantasy
About this performance
From Debussy’s and Wagner’s doomed lovers to Richard Strauss’ colourful Fantasy, this program explores the passion and catastrophe of forbidden love, conducted by Fabien Gabel. Alexandra Dariescu joins the MSO as soloist in Clara Schumann’s long overlooked Piano Concerto.
- Adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck’s symbolist play of the same name, Debussy’s 1898 suite of music from his the opera Pelléas and Mélisande tells the tale of doomed lovers through swirling, impressionistic musical language.
- Despite being forbidden by her father to marry Robert Schumann, Clara did just that, the day before her 21st birthday. A renowned concert pianist and talented composer, Clara had premiered her own Piano Concerto, filled with ravishing, memorable themes, at the age of just sixteen. While she continued to perform across Europe to great acclaim after marrying Robert, her own compositional works were largely overlooked by the male-dominated world of classical music. In recent years, her brilliance as a composer has been recognised, in no small part due to this compelling concerto.
- If a single work had to be named to have shaped the course of history, it may well be Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde. Tristan demonstrated the profound capacity of music to create drama and reveal the inner emotions of characters on a level that was, at that time, unimaginable. The opera’s bookends – Prelude and Liebestod (Love-Death) – ache with the passion and catastrophe of these lovers’ fates.
- Richard Strauss’ lush, colourful Fantasy draws upon music from his 1919 operatic romance, Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow).
Duration: approx. 1 hour and 45 minutes including interval
