Programme Notes
Lamsma & Tarmo Peltokoski
Simone
PROGRAMME
conductor Tarmo Peltokoski
violin Simone Lamsma
Bernard Herrmann 1911-1975
Vertigo: Concert Suite (1958)
• Prelude
• The Nightmare
• Scène d’Amour
Erich Wolfgang Korngold 1897-1957
Violin Concerto in D major, op. 35 (1937/1945)
• Moderato nobile
• Romance
• Finale: Allegro assai vivace
intermission
Richard Wagner 1813-1883
Tannhäuser: Overture and Venusberg Music (1845)
Zoltán Kodály 1882-1967
Dances of Galánta (1933)
Concert ends at around 16.15
Most recent performances by our orchestra: Herrmann Vertigo Suite: first perfomance
Korngold Violin Concerto: Dec 2017, violin Michael Foyle, conductor Otto Tausk
Wagner Tannhäuser Music: Nov 2015, conductor
Jérémie Rhorer
Kodály Dances of Galánta: Nov 2019, conductor
Antony Hermus
One hour before the start of the concert, Maartje Stokkers will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €5. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden.
Cover: Photo Jean-Luc Benazet (Unsplash) Sueurs Froides (‘Cold Sweats’): poster for the French version of Hitchcock’s film Vertigo with music by Bernard Herrmann
Venus en Tannhäuser, schilderij (fragment) van Lawrence Koe, ca. 1896. Collectie Brighton and Hove Museum & Art Gallery
Visual music
Richard Wagner and film music: the two big loves of Tarmo Peltokoski, the new Principal Guest Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. In this concert the master of Bayreuth and the musical masters of Hollywood outdo each other with their most visual music. Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály joins them with an almost cinematic look back to a scene from his childhood.
‘America’, explained Bernard Herrmann, internationally famous for his scores for many Hitchcock films, ‘is the only country in the world which is home to so-called ‘film composers’. Outside the US there are just composers who occasionally work on a film.’ This illustrates the difference in culture between the US, with its glorious film and amusement industry, and the indispensable role of film composers, and Europe with its classical tradition of Bach, Beethoven and their acolytes, where film music remained a digression. Nevertheless, the early Hollywood films were full of the European ‘classical tradition’, thanks mainly to the countless Jewish immigrants who had fled Nazi persecution, with the music of Mahler and Richard Strauss in their luggage. By such means the romantic style that had virtually died out in Europe was finding a new lease of life in the US. You can hear it clearly in the many love scenes, characterised by the swooning strings of the German and Austrian romantics.
Vertigo
Bernard Herrmann, born in New York as the son of immigrant Russian Jewish parents, demonstrated the enormous influence that a composer could exert on a film. ‘Hitchcock completes about sixty per cent of the film, and I finish it off’, he once said. Perhaps the most successful example of their collaboration was the psychological thriller Vertigo from 1958. It is a condition suffered by San Francisco detective Scottie (played by James Stewart) after trying – unsuccessfully - to prevent his colleague from falling off a high roof. An old school friend seeks his help with his suicidal wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), with whom
Scottie falls in love and finds himself dragged further and further into a deadly intrigue. A classic Hitchcock scenario! Herrmann’s masterful score is perhaps the greatest narrative force through the whole film. Suspense, menace, morbid obsession, fatal infatuation, oppressive atmosphere: all flawlessly captured by Herrmann in musical notes. The major and minor chords of his dizzying ‘vertigo’ motif alone, rising and falling simultaneously, are bone chilling. In the suite from the film score we hear three crucial scenes: prelude, nightmare, and love scene.
An Austrian in Hollywood
Turning to the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957), who has been enjoying a steady revival over the last few decades, having often been previously dismissed as a man from a bygone age. Korngold grew up in Brno, modern-day Czechia, the son of a Jewish music critic. He was a gifted child prodigy, hailed by Gustav Mahler as a ‘musical genius’. In 1920 he reached the height of his fame in Europe with his opera Die tote Stadt, receiving praise from composers including Richard Strauss and Puccini. On his return to Hollywood in 1938 for The Adventures of Robin Hood he chose to remain in the US, following Germany’s fatal invasion of Austria – the ‘Anschluss’ – and the growing danger for the Jewish people. ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood saved my life’, Korngold would later reflect. But as a Hollywood composer he did not turn his back to the concert hall. After the war, for example, he would compose the incredibly beautiful Violin Concerto for fellow émigré Bronisław Huberman, which he based in part on his earlier film scores. The concerto creates a wonderful image of Viennese Art
Nouveau, with its painterly, almost intoxicating atmospheres, evident, for example, in the warm string sounds of the first movement. Or the atmospheric harps, bewitching celeste and vibraphone in the melancholy romance. The finale closes the piece with real panache: a nimble ‘jig’ from the 1937 film The Prince and the Pauper. It wasn’t Huberman who performed the premiere in 1947, having already returned to Europe, but Jascha Heifetz. Musicologist Nicholas Slonimsky hailed Korngold as a composer ‘of the very last breath of the romantic spirit of Vienna’.
Body or spirit
Wagner was the grand master of imagination. He forged together heroic stories, storming music, and overwhelming staging into immersive experiences that would make your eyes and ears fall short. Had he lived a century later, he might have found his ideal workplace in Hollywood – as a colleague of Herrmann and Korngold, or, more likely, as a film director. His opera Tannhäuser would then have been an epic blockbuster. The titular character is the historical figure of Tannhäuser, a thirteenth century German wandering minstrel who took part in the Crusades. He is said to have succumbed to the physical delights in the mythological Venusberg in Middle Germany where the goddess Venus held court. But Tannhäuser yearns to return to his own world and to his beloved Elisabeth, much to the fury of Venus. During a song contest on the Wartburg near Eisenach, Tannhäuser sings in praise of Venus, to the dismay of the public, and he is banished. He seeks absolution from the Pope, but in vain. Returning home, he sees a funeral cortege bearing the coffin of Elisabeth and falls down dead. Only then does he receive forgiveness. In the overture you can hear references to the most important
musical themes. The scene that follows is in the Venusberg, in which chromatic waves and robust instrumentation graphically depict the subterranean vaults of the court of Venus and the bacchanals being enjoyed there.
Musical memories
The progression of a human life can sometimes resemble the moves on a chess board. That’s how Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály saw his travels to all corners of his country, as the son of an official of the Hungarian railways who was often transferred between locations. In 1885 the family arrived for a seven-year stay in Galánta, on the main line between Budapest and Bratislava, capital of modern-day Slovakia. In his Dances of Galánta from 1933, Kodály recalls his musical memories of that time. The work had been commissioned by the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the orchestra, and was premiered in the same year. Kodály based the dances on an earlier collection of folk dance melodies and moulded them into the form of a round dance with refrain. They are examples of a vigorous Hungarian male dance, the ‘verbunkos’, from the German word ‘Werbung’, the recruiting of young soldiers by means of this enticing dance. Composed at a time when dark clouds were descending over Europe.
Clemens Romijn‘The Adventures of Robin Hood saved my life’, Korngold would later reflect.
Principal Guest Conductor
Born: Vaasa, Finland
Current position: Music Director
Latvia National Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Music Director Designate Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse
Education: piano at Kuula College (Vaasa) and the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki), conducting with Jorma Panula, Sakari
Oramo, Hannu Lintu and Jukka-Pekka
Saraste
Breakthrough: 2022: positions in Bremen, Riga, Rotterdam, and Toulouse
Before: concerts with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Lahti, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Orchestra of the Komische Oper
Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio
France
Subsequently: debuts with Hong Kong
Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin, Göteborgs Symfoniker, Los Angeles Philharmonic
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2022
Born: Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
Education: Yehudi Menuhin School with Hu
Kun; Royal Academy of Music in London with Maurice Hasson
Awards: International Violin Competition of Indianapolis (2006), Benjamin Britten
International Violin Competition (2004); Oskar Back Violin Competition (2003)
Solo debut: as fourteen-year-old with the Northern Netherlands Orchestra in Paganini’s Violin Concerto
Soloist with: London Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Vienna Symphony,
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles
Philharmonic
Premieres: Violin Concertos by De Roo, Van der Aa and Wantenaar, Lost Landscapes by Rautavaara
Instrument: ‘Mlynarski’-Stradivarius from 1718
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2009
TARMO PELTOKOSKI Photo: Peter Rigaud SIMONE LAMSMA violin Photo: Merlijn Doomernik