Successor to Beethoven?

My wife coming in at that moment and finding me with a discomposed face, exclaimed: "Some new misfortune? Courage!"

"No, no, quite the contrary."

"What, then?"

"Paganini has sent me--20,000 francs."

Hector Berlioz was 35 at the time of the gift he thus described in his memoirs; Nicolo Paganini was 56, a cancer-ridden invalid no longer bewitching the public with his Guarnerius. But to Paganini, "Beethoven had at last a successor" in Berlioz, and the gift was an invitation to "write more divine compositions." Berlioz obliged with one of his most stunning works--the long "Dramatic Symphony," Romeo and Juliet. Last week the New York Philharmonic and the Juilliard Chorus under Guest Conductor Alfred Wallenstein gave the symphony one of its rare complete performances.

At the 1839 premiere in Paris, advance publicity whetted popular interest in Romeo and Juliet, and for once a new work by Berlioz became an overnight success. ("Come, dears," wrote a society columnist. "You will hear wonderful things.") But there were grumblings even then that Romeo and Juliet was a curious hybrid--neither symphony nor oratorio nor opera. What Berlioz was aiming for was a new amalgam of symphony and opera in which vocal solos, choral and instrumental passages were mixed in loosely linked episodes. In Berlioz' musical shorthand, some moments of highest passion--the passages between Romeo and Juliet--are left to the orchestra alone because it offered "a richer, more varied, less limited language" than would have been possible with words. The soloists and chorus, on the other hand, often serve merely as commentators on the action.

Last week's performance admirably underlined all the sharp and sudden contrasts: the swirling turbulence of the strings, portraying tumult and strife, giving way to the stately chorus of trombones marking the prince's intervention; the remarkably effective muted chanting of the chorus in "Juliet's Funeral Procession," followed after "Juliet's Awakening" by a shattering explosion of the orchestra in flamboyantly strutting rhythms. Throughout, Conductor Wallenstein managed to catch the remarkable range of inflections that Berlioz alone seemed to hear in an orchestra.

Despite the success of last week's performance, Romeo and Juliet is not likely to become a concert hall favorite because of its length (88 minutes) and its great demands on performers. But for concertgoers lucky enough to encounter the right combination of artists on the right night, the Berlioz work will always speak eloquently, as Toscanini put it, of "things one cannot understand or imagine."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.