deep bass sonority wonderful concert band

#Deep bass sonority wonderful concert band full

Rounding off with Flight, the suite is given a thrilling ending. The emotional core of the suite, The Prince and the Princess, is an enchanting oasis, with its gorgeous symphonic textures pre-echoing the Golden Age Hollywood.

#Deep bass sonority wonderful concert band full

The ensuing March and Scherzo make full use of orchestral rhythms, both charged with sonic energy. A brief introduction, The Ridicules, opens the suite, followed by the splendid Infernal Scene or The Magician Tchelio and Fata Morgana Play Cards, setting the orchestra ablaze with fantasy and nightmare.

With six orchestral excerpts ranging from the prologue to the opera’s closing scene, the symphony suite is a charming affair. A fusion of commedia dell’arte, surrealism and Russian fairy-tale opera, Prokofiev’s musical score is a brilliant combination of stirring harmonies, poignant rhythms and the full spectrum of symphonic colour. Preceding the Sibelius symphony, the evening was set in motion with Serge Prokofiev’s six-movement suite from the opera The Love for Three Oranges (1919-1921). Closing with an enigma of a coda, the symphony was brought to a spellbinding close. Vehement and translucent, fiery and engaging, allegro molto fourth movement was awaken in tremendous sonorities, with its unique textures unveiled in dazzling manner. While I had some reservations for the performances of the first three moments, I was completely sold to Søndergård’s astounding take on the finale with the Berliners. In terms of tempi, poco was more stressed than vivace, enhancing the sheer beauty of the music, but playing down its steadfastness, to some degree. The poco vivace third movement, a scherzo of sorts, was clad in captivating sonic hue.

Sound-wise, the performance was perhaps more akin to Herbert von Karajan’s classic 1960s recording than Rattle’s 2015 account, with weightier sonics and more prominent legato at play. On Saturday, the second movement, with its peculiar allegretto moderato tempo indication, came off in a more thoroughly satisfying manner, as Søndergård and the orchestra ventured through the fantasy-realm of the music with spirited insight. While the movement’s closing was conceived in excellent architecture, both in terms of sonority and dramaturgy, the symphony’s opening might have benefitted from some extra clarity, with balances urging re-adjustment here and there.Įven with doubling, the harp part, a rare thing for Sibelius, tended to get overridden by the orchestra, unlike in the Berliner’s previous take on the score with Sir Simon Rattle six years ago, with only one harp onstage. With Søndergård, the orchestra gave the first movement a sonically beautiful, albeit somewhat discontinuous performance. As the movement unfolds, the musical fabric permutes into the most wondrous textures, mounting to a resplendent climax, before resolving into a subtle coda. The music gradually builds up to an allegro molto moderato for full orchestra.

Scored for an orchestra of duple winds, brass, timpani and strings, augmented with bass clarinet and harp, the symphony is set into motion with a chant-like introduction, with string and woodwind lines woven together in sublime counterpoint. Based on modal harmonies, the four-movement symphony bears a pastoral character, appearing from the morning mists and traveling through sunlit fields and shadowy forests, occasionally darkened by storm clouds. Sibelius’s penultimate (completed) symphony is, in many ways, the most enigmatic in the Finnish master’s cycle. 33a (1919), both framing Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 and 2, conducted by Kirill Petrenko and Marie Jacquot, Saturday evening’s playlist included a suite from The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1928-29), alongside Serge Prokofiev’s Symphonic Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, Op. © Frederike van der Straetenįor the third evening of The Golden Twenties online festival, Berliner Philharmoniker teamed up with conductor Thomas Søndergård for yet another fascinatingly diverse programme.įollowing the performances of Kurt Weill’s Symphonies Nos. Thomas Søndergård conducting Berliner Philharmoniker.