by So much shared, but so very different. Mendelssohn wrote his Italian symphony in 1833 and revised her the following year. Berlioz wrote his Harold en Italie Symphony in 1834 after having spent a stay in Rome in which the two composers had spent each other. So the Aurora Orchestra came up with the clever idea of putting the two Italian symphonies side by side.
Apart from their loosely shared inspiration and shape, the two works have little in common. Mendelssohn is an expert and extroverted symphonic letter, narrow and technically technically flawless. The Berlioz now follows a wandering star of all his own, brooding romantic and constantly innovative, exemplary illustration of the Solo viola, which represents the melancholy of byon’s introspective hero Childe Harold.
These two works could have formed a well -controlled program of a traditional way. But the Aurora and its conductor Nicholas Collon are not traditional. They are primarily performance players who are committed to deepening themselves and the audience into the excitement of live music experiences. It is one of the many reasons why the audience love them.
In the second half, the Mendelssohn was played from the memory, an Aurora specialty, the score in great pace and the players who get up and interact. It was difficult to resist, especially when the players distributed themselves to the hall to conquer the Breakneck -end -valid movement of the Italian Saltarello symphony. Pay attention to the Aurora, which gives Shostakovich’s fifth symphony at the Proms this summer the same treatment.
Meanwhile, Harold was presented as a “dramatic exploration”. Texts based on Berlioz ‘Mémoires were declamated between the movements and the orchestra of actor Charlotte Ritchie from the orchestra. Collon and the viola soloist Lawrence Power have also poured in. Makes his whisper even fixed idea Topic before he hiked byically through the hall when he played the lonely music in the heart of the symphony.
It would be unbelievable not to be involved in that. But sometimes it can distract. In his recording of Berlioz ‘Symphony under Andrew Manzze is just as poetic and nuanced a Harold bridges like any other on the disc. But in the midst of so much other activities, the orchestral balance of Aurora sometimes made him less favors. When he was still in stock to deliver Harold’s skeleton of Arpeggios at the end of the second movement, it was a memory that Berlioz ‘music offers his own theater.
