Romeo and Juliet - Tchaikovsky
Romeo et Juliette (exc) - Berlioz
Romeo and Juliet Suite No 2 (exc) - Prokofiev
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
A programme of orchestral music inspired by Romeo and Juliet is an attractive idea, though doing justice to music so full of drama and feeling is a challenge. At the National Concert Hall on Friday night the National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Richard Studt played works which, in their stylistic and generic variety, epitomised the universality of Shakespeare's story.
The first half consisted of two important attempts to treat the story through symphonic means. Tchaikovsky's Fantasy Overture (1870-80) superbly balances the differing demands of narrative and musical cohesion. Berlioz's Symphonie dramatique (1839), of which we heard three orchestral excerpts, uses a chorus to set the scene, and the orchestra, the composer said, to express "the sentiments and passions".
Both works make their strongest impact when the calculated expressive contrasts of details are evident, but held together by largescale shaping. Tchaikovsky's heart-on-sleeve music came across better than Berlioz's more rarefied, literary approach. Most basics of orchestral discipline were sound enough, but the overall effect of this passionate music was paradoxically deadpan.
Prokofiev's ballet and Bernstein's West Side Story are utterly different from one another in style, but they have in common that directness characteristic of the best types of stage music. Excerpts from the second of Prokofiev's suites and the complete Bernstein Symphonic Dances were more persuasive than the music in the first half in that the playing captured some of the contrasting qualities of these characterpiece collections. The audience's warm response at the end was a token of that, but above all of the vivid, communicative nature of this music.