Vancouver Symphony preview: All-orchestral concert pairs Mozart and Berlioz symphonies

It’s customary for orchestras to fashion their programs with at least one concerto in which the spotlight falls on the amazing talents of the featured soloist. But every now and then orchestras widen the spotlight a bit – well, sometimes a lot – so that it reaches across the stage and from side to side and from front to back to embrace the entire orchestra. That’s the idea behind this weekend’s concerts with the Vancouver Symphony. The focus of its program will highlight the local band under Music Director Salvador Brotons to perform a famous symphonic work by Mozart and another by Berlioz.

It seems incomprehensible that Mozart’s adopted hometown of Vienna would get tired of his music, but that actually happened. In the mid-1880s, as Mozart turned 30 years old, and he had a finished a symphonic. So he accepted an invitation from musicians and patrons in Prague to visit that city, and that’s where his Symphony No. 38 in D Major was first performed. Hence, it became known as the “Prague Symphony.”

The “Prague Symphony” contains lots of drama and many exposed sections for the woodwinds. The musicians have to work together as a nimble unit¸ yet convey emotion.

“Performing Mozart is always a big challenge,” noted Brotons in an email exchange. “The ‘Prague Symphony’ is a very delicate work. I will use a smaller orchestra. In Mozart everything must be perfect. All imperfections are noticeable.”

Up to the time that Mozart wrote the ‘Prague Symphony,’ such works had a structure that was very familiar to listeners in Vienna, but Mozart changed that.

“Symphonies were always fast–slow–minuet–fast in Vienna,” explained Brotons, “But this symphony does not have a minuet. Sometimes classical minuets are a little all the same. This one has just three movements, which is more in the Italian style. It’s a perfect symphony from the beginning to the end. I love it and have conducted it several times... the last time in Israel.”

With Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” the drama in the music goes up several notches, which reflected the composer’s own life. When he was 24 years old, he fell obsessively in love with Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson even though he could not understand English. He proposed marriage to her, but she never replied and left Paris.

The fervor of unrequited love drove Berlioz to write the “Symphonie Fantastique,” an hour-long is an hour-long rollercoaster of a piece. In five-movements, Berlioz unveils a sequence of events that is pierced by a principal theme, symbolizing the beloved, which he called the idée fixe, or ‘fixed idea.’ There’s a wild party, a pastoral scene, and a drug-induced dream in which he thinksthat he has killed his beloved. That leads to a march to the scaffold and a witches’ sabbath where all sorts of specters mock him at his funeral.

“Berlioz wrote this symphony in 1829, just two years after Beethoven’s death,” noted Brotons. “It is a big programmatic piece that is truly innovative and in the Romantic vein. Berlioz wanted to impress listener; so it if full of surprises.”

Brotons often likes to conduct by memory, but the “Symphonie Fantastique” has many challenges.

“It has irregular measure phrasing, which makes it difficult to memorize the score,” wrote Brotons. “I did it from memory in the past. I do not know if I will have enough time to do it this week. I have done it in Vancouver once. That was about 15 years ago, I believe. I remember I did also in Everett, Washington after the Vancouver performance.”

Looking ahead, the orchestra recently announced a stellar lineup for this summer’s Vancouver USA Arts & Music Festival (August 1 - 3). Brotons and Gerard Schwarz will conduct the Vancouver Symphony with soprano Renée Fleming, bluegrass violinists Mark and Maggie O’Connor, and guitarist Sharon Isbin as the featured artists. Wow!