Liszt had discovered Goethe’s Faust in a French translation just before the premiere of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, and it was Berlioz who drew his attention to it. Though he initially contemplated writing an opera on this topic, he ultimately decided on a symphonic work which he called “A Faust Symphony in Three Character Pictures” which evoke Faust, Marguerite and Mephistopheles. His goal was to create psychological portraits that capture the character from within and, through recurring motifs and melodies, show that the three figures are interconnected. The work was premiered in Weimar on 5 September 1857 under the direction of the composer. In this performance, Leonard Bernstein conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tenor Kenneth Riegel at Boston’s Symphony Hall.
Schubert, My Dream – Schubert’s “Great” C major symphony as a film by Norbert Beilharz
We see Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 (The Great C-major Symphony) in Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal. Filming him is Norbert Beilharz. But what he is filming are also the thoughts which listening to the music arouses in him. Beilharz has atempted to transform the symphony into images. To emphasize the subjective nature of his vision, Beilharz conjures up an old man who, while attending the concert, is overtaken by memories. Schubert’s music evokes in him moments of joy and sadness, happiness and desperation, love and pain – all as changeable as the seasons. Harnoncourt, the member of the audience and his memories are woven into a triangle with such a dramatic tension that even Harnoncourt’s gestures seem to be in interplay with the old man’s images of the past. “My Dream” is the device which appears at the beginning of a story written in 1822 and attributed to Franz Schubert. In 1839, a signed manuscript was given to Robert Schumann by Franz’s brother Ferdinand Schubert. Norbert Beilharz chose the device to be the title of his filmed essay on Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major.
La Fille Mal Gardée (The Unchaperoned Daughter)
Premiered in Bordeaux two weeks before the storming of the Bastille, “La fille mal gardée” is the only classic 18th-century ballet still in the repertoire today. Critics found that the naturalness, sensitivity and humor of Heinz Spoerli’s 1981 staging make it superior to the benchmark staging by Sir Frederick Ashton, who brought the work back to life and worldwide fame in 1960.
Karl Richters Vermächtnis (The Legacy of Karl Richter)
The music of Johann Sebastian Bach was at the center of Karl Richter’s life. Karl Richter breathed new life into Bach’s music by bringing it to new circles of listeners. The church musician Karl Richter (1926-1981) founded the Munich Bach Orchestra and Bach Choir in the 1950s and thus put into practice his new ideas of Bach interpretation. He departed from oppressively large orchestral arrangements, introduced a new simplicity, allowing the notes to turn directly into music. He kindled a blaze of enthusiasm for Bach that goes on to this day. “The Legacy of Karl Richter” documents the main milestones, events and people in the life of this great artist and personality. It shows his roots in the Saxon-Thuringian musical tradition and conveys something of the splendor of Karl Richter’s interpretations of Bach and Handel, which remain unsurpassed to this day. Light is also shed upon the versatility of Richter’s musical talent, which ranged far beyond Bach and Handel.
Mahler, Symphony No.8 in E flat major “Symphony of a Thousand”
Leonard Bernstein conducted the work at the Salzburg Festival in 1975 and shortly thereafter in Vienna’s Konzerthaus, where it was recorded. The stage of the Konzerthaus was enlarged to make room for the unusually large orchestra, the two choruses, the children’s choir and the soloists. Bernstein was the first conductor ever to record all of Mahler’s symphonies not only on disk, but also on video. The Mahler cycle was the first project in the more than 20-year-long association between Leonard Bernstein and Unitel. The leading Mahler interpreter of our time, Bernstein recorded all of Mahler’s symphonies between 1971 and 1985, chiefly with the Vienna Philharmonic, producing a unique musical document and triggering a major reappreciation of Mahler’s works. “All Mahler symphonies, all Mahler works for that matter, deal in extremes, extremes of dynamic, of tempo, of emotional meaning. When it is bare, it’s extremely bare, when it is thick and rich, it’s thicker and richer than anything in ‘Götterdämmerung’, and when it is suffering it suffers to a point that no music has ever suffered before.” (Leonard Bernstein)
Bruckner, Symphony No.7 in E major
Sir Georg Solti (1912-1997), one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, was a testament to the elegance and impeccable tastefulness of Central European music-making. Born in Budapest in 1912, he studied with Béla Bartók, Ernö von Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály and Leo Weiner. In 1937, Toscanini chose him to be his assistant at the Salzburg Festival. After the war, Solti was appointed Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera. Further stations in his career were the Frankfurt Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the London Philharmonic. Solti’s remarkable partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra began in 1954, when he first led the orchestra at the Ravinia Festival. After returning to conduct the ensemble several times during the following years, he was named Music Director in 1969 and held this post for a phenomenal 22 years. He is credited with greatly extending and enhancing the orchestra’s worldwide reputation. “In Chicago he has whipped, cajoled, hammered, burnished and conjured an orchestral sound that manages to be two entirely opposite things at once. On the one hand, there is that seductive, mellow roar from the winds and brass; on the other, a meticulously controlled string tone whereby more than 60 players take on the crispness and clarity of a chamber ensemble.” (Newsweek, Oct. 19, 1987) Solti died in September 1997, just before his 85th birthday. Anton Bruckner began working on his Seventh Symphony in 1881 and completed it on 5 September 1883. The first performance was led by Arthur Nikish in Leipzig on 30 December 1884 and was a success that helped establish the composer as a major composer. The work has since become Bruckner’s most popular symphony. This recording features the Chicago Symphony under Sir Georg Solti.
The Love of Three Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein’s relationships with the orchestras he conducted were always intense. At their best, he felt that they were somewhere between a love affair and a family in which he played the role of the father. In more than 40 years on the podium, he enjoyed this special kind of relationship with a number of orchestras in the Old World and the New. “The Love of Three Orchestras” is an account of that experience, but concentrates on the three great orchestral families closest to his heart: the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras. Bernstein begins by looking back to that moment in 1943 when he made his triumphant debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 25. Among the landmarks he recalls are the Young People’s Concerts and his twelve years as musical director. Bernstein’s association with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra began in 1947. His reminiscences include stories of performances during the early battle-torn days of the foundation of the State of Israel. Bernstein’s relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic began in 1966. He tells how the relationship got off to a disastrous start and recounts some of the difficulties he found in playing the music of Gustav Mahler with them. The music sequences and examples which illustrate Bernstein’s reminiscences are taken from Unitel films and videotapes directed by Humphrey Burton.
The Little Drummerboy – A TV-Essay on Gustav Mahler by and with Leonard Bernstein including excerpts from Mahler’s symphonies and song cycles
In this musical essay, Leonard Bernstein recollects and relives his experiences with the music of the great Viennese composer and conductor Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Bernstein filmed all of Mahler’s ten symphonies for Unitel as well as Das Lied von der Erde and the Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The vocal soloists of these productions, Dame Janet Baker, Christa Ludwig, Edith Mathis, Lucia Popp and Walton Groenroos, underscore Leonard Bernstein’s elucidations with appropriate music examples. The recordings with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra were made in Tel Aviv, those with the London Symphony Orchestra in the Cathedral of Ely and those with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the Grosser Musikvereinssaal in Vienna, in which Gustav Mahler himself conducted. The Little Drummer Boy illustrates the fundamental concepts of Leonard Bernstein’s interpretation of Mahler’s works, and exposes not only the building material and framework of Mahler’s brilliant structures, but also the tensional pulls within them. Searching for the musical roots and the hidden truths guiding the composer, Leonard Bernstein discovers the key to Mahler’s music in the composer’s repressed Jewishness. Starting from the song Der Tambourg’sell (From Des Knaben Wunderhorn, written in 1899), Leonard Bernstein spans a broad arch over all the symphonies and concludes with Mahler’s last and greatest song, the Lied von der Erde (1910).
Schubert, Die Winterreise (The Winter Journey) D.911, op.89. Lieder Cycle based on poems by Wilhelm Müller
The internationally acclaimed baritone Hermann Prey was born in Berlin in 1929. He made his breakthrough in 1956 as Figaro in the Vienna State Opera’s production of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville”. He has since performe at all of the world’s great opera houses and festivals. Hermann Prey has always loved lieder, especially the works of Franz Schubert. This inspired him to found the Schubertiade, a festival in Hohenems, Austria, entirely devoted to this composer’s works. He also established the New York Schubertiade in 1988.
Cardillac
The world premiere of “Cardillac” in 1926 placed Hindemith in the forefront of contemporary composers. In 1952 Hindemith thoroughly revised the work, which originally celebrated the principle of uncompromising artistic license; the artist, whose only obligation is to his creations, stands outside the moral and ethical norms of society. For his production, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle chose the original version, which he found “more cheeky, youthful, aggressive. Cardillac was written during the great age of German expressionist film: Nosferatu, M, Caligari, Metropolis. For stylistic reasons alone I have put Cardillac in this milieu. I use elements of the expressionist film in the lighting, in the gestures, in the costumes.”