Rather than dwell on the misfortunes of the millions of people whose lives are being disrupted by Hurricane Sandy, here is a survey of storms in music, compiled with the help of my Facebook friends:
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
The most popular operatic storm — a great musical device to stir up an audience’s attention — has to be from Gioachino Rossini’s Barber of Seville:
Rossini crafted other musical tempests as well, like in the Overture to Guillaume Tell:
… or in his 6th quartet sonata, “La tempesta,” written in 1804 for two violins, cello and double bass, gorgeously played here by members of Atalanta Fugiens:
The roots of storms in music go back to Baroque opera. The first one in a surviving English work comes after the witches’ scene in Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, from the late 1680s.
One of the best Baroque roils is the Act 4 Tempête in the 1706 opera Alcione by Marin Marais, played here by Le Concert des nations under the great Jordi Savall:
There is a solo motet by Antonio Vivaldi, “In turbato mare irato” (RV 627). Here is the opening, as sung by soprano Susan Gritton and played by The Kings Consort, led by Robert King:
We can’t forget the “Sturm und Drang” movement in the late 18th century as an obvious source of environmental angst, most famously in the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, where the “Pastorale” turns into a sudden dash for the nearest available shelter (with thanks to the Russian National Orchestra and conductor Mikhail Pletnev):
The Beethoven solo piano equivalent comes in the opening to his Op. 31 No. 2 Sonata, known as “The Tempest,” nicely played here by Spencer Myer:
One of the best storms in Romantic opera comes from a great master, Hector Berlioz, in the opening to Act 4 of Les Troyens. Here is conductor John Eliot Gardiner leading the Orchestre révolutionnaire et romantique in a great 2003 production from the Théâtre du Chatelet (the place where the opera had its premiere in 1863):
A storm famously opens Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello (heard here by the orchestra and chorus of the La Fenice in Venice, under conductor Giuseppe Marotta 10 years ago):
Then, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the symphonic poets and tone painters assembled especially rich and dark canvases for their bouts of intempéries.
The opening to Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre contains a storm motive that recurs several times:
This pairing of Préludes by Claude Debussy by Maurizio Pollini as concert encores in Japan is backwards for our purposes, but no less effective because of his gorgeous playing. Here are “La Cathédrale engloutie,” followed by “Ce qu’a vu le vent de l’ouest:”
In the 20th century, there is probably no more affecting stormy opera than Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. Here is the fourth of the Sea Interludes Britten compiled from music in the opera. This is from a live concert recording featuring the Boston Symphony and conductor Leonard Bernstein made in 1989:
Canadian composers haven’t forgotten the power of a storm, by any stretch. Here is Laura Whelan in the Storm Aria — “There is going to be a storm tonight” — from John Estacio’s opera Filumena, premiered by Edmonton Opera in 2005:
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To help while away the wind and rain — while also recognizing the loss that comes with disastrous weather — here are two different listening experiences.
The first is a wonderful Baroque programme, entitled Tempesta di mare, presented by the Venice Baroque Orchestra, led by Luca Mares, and featuring firebrand soprano Simone Kermes.
The pieces are a G minor Violin Concerto by Vivaldi (RV 157), the Handel arias “Furie terribili” from Rinaldo and “Piangeró la sorte mia” from Giulio Cesare, “Gelido in ogni vena” from Vivaldi’s Farnace, “Son qual nave” from Artaserse by Ricardo Broschi, “Dopo un’ orrida procella from Griselda, and the immortal “Lascia ch’io pianga” from Handel’s Almirena:
The second is an operatic rarity, Ralph Vaughan William’s operatic adaptation of J.S. Synge’s 1904 tragedy, Riders to the Sea, about ocean-borne tragedy among Aran islanders. Here are powerful, affecting performances by Linda Finnie, Karl Daymond, Lynne Dawson, Ingrid Attrot and Pamela Helen Stephen, with the Northern Sinfonia led by the late-and-lamented Richard Hickox:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
