Despite the increasing interest in recent years in Scriabin's music, that composer's revolutionary symphonic works are even today still too rarely heard. I jumped at the chance then, despite the plummeting temperatures here in NYC, to go Friday evening to Carnegie Hall where Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in the first of a series of three concerts, were scheduled to perform not only a Scriabin symphony but orchestral works by Mendelssohn and Debussy as well.
The program opened with Mendelssohn's Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture, Op. 27 (1828). This work is really as much about Beethoven as it is the two poems by Goethe on which it was based. Fourteen years before Mendelssohn composed his overture, Beethoven had already set the same verses to music in his own Op. 112 for chorus and orchestra. The composer had intended his cantata as a gesture of admiration - he had met Goethe in 1814 in Teplitz and had spent quite some time in his company - but the poet continued to ignore the tribute even after Beethoven had written to express his disappointment at Goethe's lack of acknowledgment.
"I am now faced with the fact that I too must remind you of my existence—I trust that you received the dedication to Your Excellency of Meersstille und Glückliche Fahrt which I have set to music. It would afford me much pleasure to know whether I had united my harmony with yours in appropriate fashion . . . . How highly would I value a general comment from you on the composing of music or on setting your poems to music!"
No explanation has ever been given why Goethe treated Beethoven so badly, nor why Mendelssohn should then choose the same texts when later creating his own instrumental music. There is, after all, more than a passing resemblance between Mendelssohn's work and that of Beethoven (for one thing, both pieces are written in the key of D major). Adding to the mystery is the fact that neither Beethoven nor Mendelssohn had any real knowledge of the sea; neither of them ever set foot on a ship.
Written in an era when the sea was still viewed as a hostile force, Goethe's two poems express highly contrasting moods. In the first, there is a sense of dread as the sailor regards the completely calm conditions that prevent his ship from moving forward; in the second, there is a palpable sense of relief as the voyage ends without incident and land finally appears on the horizon. Mendelssohn's overture captures very well this shift from ominous stillness to rising winds to exuberance at once again returning to the safety of firm ground. In so doing, the music anticipates, as the Program Notes correctly point out, the tone poem genre that would appear later in the century. The problem, though, is that there is too little drama in both the situations described. The listener waits in vain for a storm to arise on the high seas but instead encounters only serenity.
The next work was Debussy's La mer (1903-1905). Its subject matter made it a natural choice to follow the Mendelssohn and the pairing worked well. Although when listening to this piece one always imagines sunlight glinting off Mediterranean waters, Debussy actually composed it while staying in East Sussex in England. It was the composer's skill at creating impressions of calm vistas and gentle breezes that imbued the work with its magical character. So popular has this piece become over the years that it's difficult to believe now that when the work premiered it was not well received, perhaps because it did not fit the standard symphonic form to which audiences had by then grown accustomed. It's also of interest that Debussy finally decided to title the first movement "From dawn to noon on the sea" when in a 1903 letter to his publisher he had originally referred to it as "Beautiful sea by the bloodthirsty islands."
After intermission, the orchestra performed the work I had really come to hear, Scriabin's Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 43, "The Divine Poem" (1902-1904). This is a huge mystical work whose four movements are played without pause. The music soars and seems to reach ever upward until finally it reaches a tumultuous climax that leaves the audience emotionally exhausted. This is in accord with the work's program, outlined by the composer's lover Tatiana Schloezer, that described mankind's religious ascent from pantheism to "unity with the universe." It's noteworthy that Scriabin, a prolific composer of piano music who only later in his career, as his vision grew ever more grandiose, turned to writing orchestral music should also have prepared a piano version of his symphony. At least one critic, Leonid Sabaneyev, preferred this approach, claiming that when played in this form it sounded "much better than with an orchestra."
As for the performance itself, Muti has always been a conductor worth listening to no matter what the program. Although he has been hounded by controversy throughout his career, he has an uncanny ability to discover new levels of meaning in whatever music is being performed. Whenever I have heard him conduct, I've always come away feeling I've gained new insight into the music at hand no matter how often I've heard it before. Moreover, in the CSO, Muti has an incredible orchestra with which to work; their playing is always superb. This was an excellent concert from any perspective.
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