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Subscription Concerts 2024-2025Program C
No. 2027 Subscription (Program C)

Program

Liszt / Tasso: lamento e trionfo, sym. poem (Tasso: Lament and Triumph)

“New wine demands new bottles”—the Hungarian Romantic composer Franz Liszt (1811–1886) said this regarding one of his inventions, the “symphonic poem” (Symphonische Dichtung). He coined the term in the early 1850s to designate his single-movement orchestral works presenting extra-musical concepts. Among all his thirteen symphonic poems, the twelve including Tasso date from the period when Liszt was based in Weimar, Germany (1848–1861).
Tasso was premiered in 1849 in Weimar as the orchestral overture to a staging of the play Torquato Tasso by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). The event was to commemorate the German poet’s 100th birthday. Liszt later made revisions to it and labeled the 1854 definitive version a symphonic poem.
Inspired by not only Goethe but also Lord Byron (1788–1824), the musical piece is a tribute to Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), the Renaissance Italian poet who served the Este court in Ferrara. Liszt describes Tasso’s tragic life full of inner conflicts at the opening section in C minor. Following the central section in the style of minuet, the final section in C major praises Tasso’s posthumous lustrous fame. The principal theme is given as a plaintive tune on a bass clarinet after the introduction, before being transformed diversely throughout the piece. This melody is from a song that Liszt heard gondoliers in Venice sing on Tasso’s strophes. In the preface to the score, Liszt with deep emotion reminds the readers that the poet’s glory is still alive in Venetian folk music.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Liszt / Eine Faust-Symphonie in drei Charakterbildern (A Faust Symphony in Three Character Pictures)*

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is the great German writer and polymath who also served as the Privy Councilor of Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. His oeuvre was, for Franz Liszt (1811–1886), an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Well-versed in literature, the composer dreamed long of writing a musical work based on Goethe’s magnum opus Faust of which the Part One was first published in 1808 (the Part Two in 1832 after the author’s death).
According to the recollection of Hector Berlioz (1803–1869), he and Liszt first met on December 4th, 1830 on the day before the world premiere in Paris of the French composer’s Symphonie fantastique: he then asked Liszt if he had ever read Faust. Intrigued, Liszt became a voracious reader of this dramatic work before long. Following an incubation of the idea over many years, Liszt set to work on Eine Faust-Symphonie (A Faust Symphony) in August 1854 and completed the first version within merely two months. The highly possible catalysts for the composition were Robert Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust (Scenes from Goethe’s Faust) of which Liszt conducted the excerpts in 1849 (along with the premiere of the above-mentioned Tasso on Goethe’s centenary in Weimar, then Liszt’s base) as well as Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust (The Damnation of Faust) conducted by Berlioz himself in Weimar in 1852. The British author George Eliot’s visit to Weimar in August 1854 to research Goethe is thought to have directly motivated the Hungarian composer to put pen to paper.
Liszt later revised Eine Faust-Symphonie for a larger orchestra adding to it the final “Chorus Mysticus” based on a chorus which concludes Goethe’s Faust, so the symphony received the premiere in 1857 at the inauguration of the Goethe–Schiller Monument in Weimar. On the first edition published in 1861, the work is dedicated to Berlioz in return for his dedication of The Damnation of Faust to Liszt.
The three movements of A Faust Symphony portray respectively the three principal characters of Faust, instead of relating the drama’s plot. The first movement entitled Faust opens with an introduction giving the atonal first theme on the cellos and violas. Utilizing equally all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, this modernistic theme evokes Faust’s anguished and contemplative nature. The following four themes assist it in describing his multidimensional personality in the main sonata section. Contrastive, the middle movement Gretchen embodies the piousness and innocence of Faust’s beloved. The last movement Mephistopheles parodies the first movement’s elements in a hideous manner, alluding to the demon that negates and ridicules every single thing. The symphony’s conclusion is the aforesaid “Chorus Mysticus” sung by a tenor solo and a male chorus praising “the eternal-feminine which leads us aloft”: the evil is defeated, and Faust’s soul is saved by Gretchen’s prayer up in Heaven.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Artists

Fabio Luisi ConductorFabio Luisi

Fabio Luisi hails from Genoa. He is the Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He first conducted the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 2001, and in September 2022 he became Chief Conductor of the orchestra. He conducted Verdi’s Requiem in the concert to celebrate his appointment, and Mahler’s Symphonie der Tausend to commemorate the orchestra’s 2000th subscription concert in December 2023. These two monumental performances have brought him great success. He has presented works of German and Austrian composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and R. Strauss as well as those of Franck and Saint-Saëns, Francophone composers, and with his conducting style full of passion and poetic sentiment, has captured the hearts of many of audience members. In August 2024, he led the orchestra’s Taiwanese tour, and then will also lead a European tour in May 2025, which has been scheduled in conjunction with the Mahler Festival at The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, to which the NHK Symphony Orchestra has been invited.
He was General Music Director of the Opernhaus Zürich, Principal Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Principal Conductor of the Wiener Symphoniker, as well as General Music Director of the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Sächsische Staatsoper, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Music Director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Chief Conductor of the Tonkünstler Orchester. He is Music Director of the Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca (Apulia) and has appeared as guest conductor with numerous renowned ensembles, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Münchener Philharmoniker, the Filarmonica della Scala, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Saito Kinen Orchestra, while also conducting operas at world’s major opera houses. Important recordings include Verdi, Bellini, Schumann, Berlioz, Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Frank Martin, and Franz Schmidt, the largely forgotten Austrian composer. In addition, he has recorded various symphonic poems by Richard Strauss, and a lauded reading of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 with the Staatskapelle Dresden. His recordings of Wagner’s Siegfried and Götterdämmerung with the Metropolitan Opera won Grammy awards.

Christopher Ventris** Tenor*Christopher Ventris**

British tenor Christopher Ventris is one of world’s most renowned Wagnerian singers. He has frequently appeared at the major opera houses in the world, including the Bayreuther Festspiele and Wiener Staatsoper, performing the roles he has been especially known for, such as Siegmund in Der Walküre and the title role in Parsifal. Most recently, he sang the role of Siegmund in Wagner’s Ring Cycle performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fabio Luisi in October this year.
Other successful roles include the title role in Britten’s Peter Grimes, the Drum Major in Berg’s Wozzeck, Jimmy Mahoney in Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and Laca in Janacek’s Jenůfa. He has appeared at the Teatro alla Scala, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Opernhaus Zürich, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Opéra national de Paris, and the Metropolitan Opera, and worked with famed conductors, including Bernard Haitink, Marek Janowski, Semyon Bychkov, Simon Rattle, Fabio Luisi, Christian Thielemann, Franz Welser-Möst, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Andris Nelsons. This is his first collaboration with the NHK Symphony Orchestra.

Tokyo Opera Singers Male Chorus*Tokyo Opera Singers

Tokyo Opera Singers was formed in 1992 by mid-career and young vocalists active mainly in Tokyo in response to the wish of the late Seiji Ozawa to create a world-class chorus. The chorus continuously appeared in the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto (presently called Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival) from the same year, and in Spring Festival in Tokyo from 2004.
It also worked with overseas orchestras and opera companies such as the Wiener Philharmoniker (conducted by Simon Rattle and Seiji Ozawa), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Riccardo Muti), and the Bayerische Staatsoper (conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch) on their tour in Japan. The chorus has received high artistic acclaim from overseas and performed at the Edinburgh International Festival (1999), the China Shanghai International Arts Festival (2018), the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Concert (2019), and “Meet in Beijing” International Arts Festival (2020).
Since its first collaboration with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in the Creation (oratorio) in 2009, it has frequently appeared with the orchestra, including the year-end Beethoven 9th Symphony concerts. It also has worked with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in the Spring Festival in Tokyo from 2010 when the Wagner series started, and in March 2024, has shown a weighty presence with powerful singing in Tristan und Isolde (concert style) conducted by Marek Janowski. I am sure Tokyo Opera Singers will delight the audience with its dynamic performance in Eine Faust-Symphony.

[Junko Shibatsuji, music critic]

** Artist has been changed from initially scheduled Jamez McCorkle (Tenor).

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Program C

No. 2027 Subscription (Program C)

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