2024 SYMPHONIC SEASON OF THE TEATRO LIRICO GIUSEPPE VERDI DI TRIESTE
From 27 September to 22 December 2024
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4th Concert
Friday 18 October 2024 at 7:30 p.m.
Conductor ENRICO CALESSO
Violin GIUSEPPE GIBBONI
PROGRAMME
RICHARD WAGNER
Vorspiel und Isoldes Liebestod from the opera Tristan und Isolde
FERRUCCIO BUSONI
Concerto in D major for violin and orchestra op. 35a, KV 243
RICHARD STRAUSS
Don Juan, tone poem op. 20
Tod und Verklärung, tone poem op. 24
Orchestra by Fondazione Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi di Trieste
With Designated Permanent Music Director Enrico Calesso on the podium, this concert marks the beginning of Wagnerian music’s journey back to one of its historic and most significant Italian homes – the Teatro Verdi of Trieste. This journey will end with The Flying Dutchman performance in March 2025. The piece from Tristan und Isolde will be followed by Ferruccio Busoni’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra – marking the celebration of the centenary of the death of Busoni, who studied music and started his career in Trieste – with Giuseppe Gibboni on the violin; finally, two tone poems by Richard Strauss, with Tod und Verklärung closing the circle of Love and Death opened by Wagner’s piece, for a highly emotional and evocative night made perfect by the exquisite sound and artistic vocation of the theatre Orchestra.
Trieste prides itself – and quite rightly so – on not forgetting its past, its traditions and, in short, its unique identity in Europe. In this perspective, Wagner’s comeback is as crucial an element as the choice of pieces from the Central European twentieth century repertoire, which form an essential part of Trieste’s past, present and future musical heritage.
In this context, the fourth symphonic concert of 18 October is of particular importance, and a prelude to the upcoming opera season opening with Verdi’s La Traviata – also conducted by Enrico Calesso – just a few weeks later.
The concert opens with Vorspiel und Isoldes Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, a signature piece for our Music Director, an acclaimed – and repeatedly awarded – Wagnerian interpreter in the German-speaking area. The piece immediately introduces an evening of reflection (in music and words) on the eternal theme of Love and Death, of the irreconcilable conflict between life’s impulse and nature’s indifference, to which Wagner sought a solution in the Verklärung, transfiguration, with Isolde’s Liebestod. The solution is developed by Ringkomposition at the end of the evening with Richard Strauss’s third tone poem, Tod und Verklärung, of which the musician himself wrote: “the idea came to me to write a tone poem describing the last hours of a man who had striven for the highest ideals”. Such man is the ultimate artist. Strauss’s interpretation of the Wagnerian transfiguration was preceded – by only one year – by his Don Juan, which is unanimously considered as the work marking Strauss’s full emancipation from his teachers’ and his father’s (a horn player in the Munich Court Orchestra) conservative and anti-Wagnerian views. This marked the composer’s transformation from a young and talented classicist into a mature – albeit merely 24 years old – innovator.
At the heart of this close and poignant dialogue between Wagner and his illustrious disciple on one of the founding themes of Western philosophy, is the heartfelt tribute – on the centenary of his death – to one of Trieste’s most outstanding citizens, whose childhood home at the Tergesteo palace overlooks the theatre. Busoni made his debut as a concert pianist in Trieste when he was only seven years old, later to become a protagonist of the musical – and not only – culture of the twentieth century, so much so that he was included by Elias Canetti’s biographical novel The Tongue Set Free. Busoni composed his Concerto in D major for violin and orchestra at the age of 30, when he was at the heart of his extraordinary career as a pianist, and dedicated this coherent, new classicist work to the violin virtuoso Petri – himself a pupil of Joachim. It was a clear tribute to Brahms and his famous violin concerto, by which Busoni’s piece was undoubtedly inspired.
Trieste, 16 October 2024