For Miranda Harcourt, it is the story behind the music that draws her to the Symphonie Fantastique.
“It’s the emotional narrative that you feel, the rise and fall and the swell and the changes. It explores so many different elements of human emotion in the journey of just this one piece of music.”
Photo: Stephen A'Court Photography / Supplied
Harcourt heard it first on a trip to Los Angeles.
“We went to the Disney Hall, and it happened that Symphonie Fantastique was the piece of work that was playing, and we were very jet lagged," she recalled, "We’d just arrived, and were in that kind of semi-fugue state when you've just got off a plane. And so it really just struck me as a very powerful moment of my life, inside a beautiful piece of architecture and an amazing city full of mystical dreams.”
Inspired by the composer's real life obsession with the Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, the piece was first performed in Paris, in 1830. Over five movements, Berlioz tells the story of a young artist moving through various stages of unrequited passion for his muse, ending in his death and hers. It’s an intense and sometimes frightening tale of unrequited passion, involving murder, an execution and a witches sabbath at the finale.
But for NZSO bassoonist David Angus, intensity has always been a big part of this composer's appeal.
“It's an incredibly exciting piece," he said, "It's, you know, drug abuse, decapitation, there's a ball for some reason, also a couple of shepherds calling to each other across a ravine.
"And this idee fixe for a lovely woman. Except, at the end, due to the drugs he's taken, [the main character in the symphony] sees a sort of witch's Sabbath and the melody is incredibly distorted. And then there’s the Dies Irae, the mass for the dead.”
Berlioz and Harriet Smithson did eventually marry, but their union didn’t last. For Miranda Harcourt, knowing the real life story of the composer's obsession, complicates the music’s appeal.
“I would call this… a possession in two ways, he was possessed by her, he was possessed by his fever dream about her. And he wrote the piece of music in order to make her turn her gaze towards them and fall in love with him. And he succeeded. She did and she did, and then he possessed her and then he discarded her.”
NZSO Bassoonist David Angus Photo: Latitude Creative
It's also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts or any good podcast app.
Crescendo is voiced by RNZ Concert’s Clarissa Dunn with sound mix by Marc Chesterman. It was written and produced by Noelle McCarthy from an original concept by Bird of Paradise.
Photo: Bird Of Paradise Productions
