Schoenberg & Fauré: Pelléas et Mélisande
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Järvi
No fewer than four great composers - Fauré, Debussy, Schönberg and Sibelius - were inspired by Maurice Maeterlink's play Pelléas et Mélisande (1892). As we celebrate the anniversaries of Fauré and Schoenberg in 2024, Paavo Järvi offers here his reading of their settings of Pelléas et Mélisande with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, of which he was Music Director for almost ten years. Debussy was so preoccupied with his own operatic setting of Pelléas et Mélisande that the famous English actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell approached Gabriel Fauré to write incidental music for the play; this music then became a four-movement orchestral suite considered to be Fauré's symphonic masterpiece. In 1902, Schönberg followed the advice of his admired role model Richard Strauss and composed his own symphonic poem to Pelléas et Mélisande. The complex combinations of musical motifs and the rich texture of the large orchestra not only captivate us, but also reveal his own vision of this archaic yet universal story.
Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)
- Fauré: Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80
- Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5
August 2024
All credit to Järvi’s Frankfurt orchestra for their total immersion into two such stylistically different sound worlds – a reminder, if such were needed, of music’s ability to move us in mysterious ways with the same story from different storytellers.
Login
Ελληνικά
English