Romantic evening for Her Majesty
Mendelssohn, Grieg and Schumann feature to mark Queen Mother’s birthday
The Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra presents “Romantic Piano Celebration For The Queen Mother”, a concert to celebrate HM Queen Sirikit’s 87th birthday. Organised on Aug 22 by the Department of Cultural Promotion, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra Foundation under the Royal Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana Rajakanya, the concert features works by Mendelssohn, Grieg and Schumann, three of the greatest of the Romantic composers.
The concert opens with Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, more usually called Fingal’s Cave. On the first of many visits to Britain in 1829, the young 20-year-old composer and pianist decided to take a break from life in London for a walking tour in Scotland. Although no fan of the traditional Scottish instrument, the bagpipes, he loved the country. It was to inspire two of his best-known compositions, the Hebrides Overture and his Third Symphony named The Scottish.
In the Hebriddean Islands off the country’s west coast, he was particularly fascinated by the Isle of Staffa. Considering he was terribly seasick on the short voyage into Fingal’s Cave, it is perhaps surprising that the cave totally captivated him. Immediately he started work on a short composition.
He quickly wrote to his sister Fanny: “In order to have you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, the following came to my mind there.” He then quoted the theme that would become the opening of the Overture.
In fact the Overture contains two of the most popular of all Mendelssohn’s many great melodies. After a peaceful opening, the music conveys a sense of mystery as a storm approaches, the swell of the sea, the seagulls soaring above and the mists which descend so quickly in that part of Scotland.
Scotland also provides a connection with the composer of the evening’s second work, the A Minor Piano Concerto by Edvard Grieg. Grieg may have been Norway’s most famous composer and one of its beloved icons, but his great-grandfather Alexander Greig hailed from the Highlands of Scotland. Political uncertainties resulted in a move to Bergen in Norway. Eventually the family changed its name to the more Norwegian style of Grieg.
Young Edvard’s mother was a piano teacher who started instructing him in 1849 when he was six years old. When aged 15, she was persuaded to send him to the Leipzig Conservatory. Here he loved attending the many concerts and recitals given annually in such a music-loving city.
Attracted to composition more than performing, Grieg’s early works are mostly for piano. As he expanded his horizons to compose for full orchestras, he wrote his only piano concerto. This was given its first performance in 1869. But it was to be a bittersweet year for Grieg, for his one-year-old daughter died of meningitis.
The following year Grieg visited the virtuoso pianist and composer Franz Liszt. He had brought with him the score of the concerto. Liszt asked if he could look at it, whereupon he sightread the entire work, including all the orchestra parts!
Soloist with the RBSO in the Grieg concerto is one of today’s leading
‘‘
Returning to lead the RBSO is the celebrated Japanese conductor Koji Kawamoto
German pianists, Severin von Eckardstein. Winner of the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels, von Eckardstein has worked with many major orchestras and conductors, including Valery Gergiev, Marek Janowski, Jaap van Zweden and Paavo Jarvi.
Born just a year after Mendelssohn was an even more influential Romantic composer, Robert Schumann. As a young teenager, Robert’s father decided he would become a pianist. About to send him off to study with the celebrated composer Carl Maria von Weber in 1826, Weber suddenly died. Only a few months later his father also died.
His mother did not like the idea of his becoming a pianist and prepared to have him study law. That finally changed on Easter Sunday 1830 when Robert was 19. He was so in awe after attending a concert given by the virtuoso violinist and composer Nicolo Paganini, that young Robert went against his mother’s wishes and made the decision to become a concert pianist.
Relenting, his mother sent him to study with Friedrich Wieck. This was to result in one tragedy and one blessing. Wieck assured him he could become the finest pianist in Europe provided he worked hard.
Schumann then did something very stupid. A tendon that links our third and fourth fingers results in many aspiring pianists finding it difficult to attain true virtuosity. To make practice easier — or so he assumed — he invented a small device that would hold one finger rigid. Unfortunately for Schumann, this would so damage his right hand that a career as a professional pianist was out of the question.
Since Schumann rented a room in the Wieck household, it was only natural that he would come into regular contact with Friedrich’s daughter, Clara. Even though she was not yet in her teens, Clara was already a piano prodigy. In 1830 aged only 11, Clara’s father accompanied her on a concert tour in Germany and France.
Soon Schumann became besotted with her. When she was 18, he proposed marriage. Her father was strongly opposed and refused his permission. The couple then had to take their case to court and sue Friedrich. The judge sided with the couple. They were married in 1840. Devoted to each other, the new couple would soon have eight children running around their house.
Schumann would eventually become recognised as among the greatest Romantic composers of the 19th century. But he had started showing symptoms of some form of instability. He would often feverishly compose many of the works in a very short space of time. This would be followed by increasingly long periods of inactivity and lethargy. Soon these became acute depression.
While the bulk of his early works was written for the piano, Clara persuaded him that he should write works for orchestra. In 1841 he started composing the first of his four symphonies. Although nicknamed Spring, it was in fact written in the dead of winter.
In a letter to a friend, he said: “I wrote the symphony in that rush of spring which carries a man away even in his old age, and comes over him anew every year.” Rush was an apt description, for Schumann sketched the entire work in just four days and completed the orchestration in less than a month. The symphony was given its first performance in Leipzig with Felix Mendelssohn conducting.
As the 1840s continued Schumann’s illness became progressively worse. Doctors were not sure how it should be diagnosed and some even thought he might be affected by second-stage syphilis. Today the medical profession would probably describe it as severe bipolar disorder. Schumann himself described hearing “the voices of demons”, adding they wanted to “throw him into hell”.
In 1854 he attempted suicide by throwing himself into the River Rhine. When rescued by a boatman he asked to be committed to an asylum for the insane. He never left. Two years later he died. He was only 46.
Returning to lead the RBSO is the celebrated Japanese conductor Koji Kawamoto. Winner of the Tokyo International Conducting Competition and the Prague Spring International Music Competition, Kawamoto has been based in Germany since 2001. He has been music director of orchestras in Germany and the Czech Republic as well as much in-demand as a guest conductor around the world.
“Romantic Piano Celebration For The Queen Mother” will stage on Aug 22 at 8pm at Thailand Cultural Centre, Main Hall. Tickets are 500, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 and 2,500 baht, available via thaiticketmajor.com or rbsothailand.com.