Not slushy or sloppy or kissy-kissy, but three faces of real love will be presented by the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra for St Valentine's month offering at the Thailand Cultural Centre on Feb 8. The first face is the tragedy of love, the second face is the love of beauty, and the third is one of the most emotional offerings of love to humanity in general.
Conductor Michel Tilkin is in charge of the orchestra for Romeo And Juliet, Shakespeare's tragedy of teenagers in love. In the original in 1588, Juliet was definitely 13 years old. ("My daughter hath not seen the turn of 14 years," says her father). Romeo was probably 16 or 17.
Musically, though, their love was timeless -- at least 20 operas (including Bellini and Gounod), and hundreds of orchestral/choral composers (including Beethoven, Berlioz, Prokofiev and of course Leonard Bernstein with West Side Story).
Yet the most popular Romeo And Juliet has always been the symphonic poem by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky. The reasons are not difficult to hear. To the original doomed Italian couple and the English dramatist, Tchaikovsky added Russian pathos. More than pathos, a huge climax in the middle amongst the composer's most fervent.
Second, he actually did tell the story in four main sections. First is the cell of Friar Laurence (slow and medieval). Then the centrepiece, the two families and the meeting of the lovers. Listen to the quarrel -- and then recognise a theme that has been spoiled by being the theme for every old sobbing movie and radio soap opera.
Following that is Camille Saint-Saëns' offering of musical love. The French composer's genius was first heard at the age of three in 1838. Over the next 86 years -- from the Age of Chopin to the Age of Schoenberg -- he composed, conducted, performed, and wrote poetry and drama, travelling incessantly through the Middle East, dying in Algeria.
It is said that his music had its own manner but not its own style, yet this is unfair. The Third Violin Concerto, to be played at this concert, has the style of pure French fastidiousness and clarity -- the essence of elegance in the Parisian Golden Age.
This Concerto has all those traits. True, composers like Maurice Ravel felt that Saint-Saëns was old-fashioned. But Joshua Bell feels this concerto, which he plays frequently, shows a romantic side that can't be equalled by more-contemporary composers.
Written in 1880, it is easy listening. Romantic in style, but not excessive in emotion, this three-movement piece has its most memorable tune in the slow section, but the entire work is an ideal introduction to the highly emotional final work.
Fanny Clamagirand. Royal Bangkok Symphony Ochestra
Performing the Saint-Saëns will be a lady born to the French tradition. Paris-born Fanny Clamagirand started giving violin recitals when she was 10 years old. Since that time, besides her solo recitals, she has performed with the London Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Israel Chamber Orchestra, Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, and in collaboration with Anne-Sophie Mutter, Gidon Kremer and most other great musicians of Europe.
As for her recording of the Saint-Saëns Third Violin Concerto to be heard here, the review at AllMusic says it all: "Ms Clamagirand is nimble and dazzling … memorable … the performance would have been approved by the composer ..."
Michel Tilkin, one of Bangkok's most familiar names, is the conductor. Since becoming the music director of the RBSO, he has conducted often with the orchestra, his initial concert going back seven years. The Belgian conductor started his career with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Since then, he has conducted several world premieres with the Flanders Opera, and has worked with the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and most other orchestras in Europe and beyond.
The last work, Sir Edward Elgar's Variations For Orchestra, reverses our thoughts on love. Usually we think of love as French amour. But the preceding Concerto was cool, almost distant. And we think of the British as being reserved, but nothing is reserved about Elgar's loving tribute "to my friends pictured within".
Each variation has initials or nicknames for those friends, with music giving a picture of their personalities. They include amateur pianists and cellists, people with dogs (you may hear the barking) and architects.
Yet every variation is a passionate, emotional, fervent musical offering. The Ninth Variation, in fact, called Nimrod (based on an Old Testament character) is so overpowering that the work has been given many a rearrangement. The story behind this is interesting. A music publisher came to see Elgar when he had decided to give up composing. The publisher told him that Beethoven was often disheartened, but he wrote his greatest music. Elgar, it goes without saying, continued as well
The Variations are always subtitled Enigma, not for the characters portrayed but because Elgar explained (or didn't explain) a mystery which has never been solved.
"Its dark saying must be left unguessed," he said. "And over the whole set another and larger theme 'goes' but is not played."
People have guessed that the "dark saying" might be from the New Testament, from Shakespeare, from French poets. Nobody knows. The "unstated musical phrase" has been thought to be from Beethoven to Martin Luther's A Mighty Fortress (unlikely, since Elgar was a practicing Catholic) to Scot's folk song. But the 119-year-old enigma has never been solved.
To this writer, that is irrelevant. The work is sheerly, uninhibitedly beautiful.
Perhaps the Bangkok audience may think of Tchaikovsky's feelings during this concert. "My own life and love are never happy. Yet my music expresses what my life cannot. Yes, yes, yes, I have striven to render in music all the anguish and the bliss of love."
More likely, Bangkok will respond the way George Bernard Shaw responded when he heard the Elgar Variations at the premiere in 1899.
"Wow!" he wrote. A word filled with expertise, emotion and barely disguised love.
Harry Rolnick is a New York correspondent for concertonet.com.
"Romantic Variations" by the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, with Michel Tilkin as conductor and Fanny Clamagirand as violin soloist, at Thailand Cultural Centre, Main Hall, on Friday, Feb 8, at 8pm. This is a special concert. For more information and ticket reservation, call Bangkok Symphony Orchestra Foundation at 02-255-6617/18, 02-254-4954/55 or visit www.bangkoksymphony.org.
