Of all the music inspired by drama, there is probably no more perfect match than Mendelssohn and Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," with its flitting elves, clownish antics, sweet mourning of lovers' mock deaths, and, of course, the famous grand wedding march. REVIEW
Marrying Mendelssohn
to the Bard is a ‘Dream’By Ruth O. Bingham
Special to the Star-BulletinMendelssohn composed the overture, an exquisite 12-minute gem, when he was only a teenager; in his early 30s, he added the rest of the dozen-or-so numbers for a performance of the play in German translation.
Oddly enough, the overture remains the best of the lot, partly because the rest is mostly expanded versions of material already presented in the overture, and partly because the added numbers are -- and were intended to be -- background music. The effect is rather like a film score without the film: moods without events.
To mitigate that effect, Eden-Lee Murray compiled a script for two readers, herself and Terence Knapp, borrowing the format of the German original and incorporating lines from Shakespeare.
Narrated in parts, acted in others, Murray's elegant script succinctly captured the gist of the play. Nonetheless, some familiarity with Shakespeare was necessary, and some patrons departed wishing they had re-read the play beforehand. The difficulty lay less with the script than with being able to understand the words, owing largely to Blaisdell's perennially poor sound system and basic acoustics: The larger the hall and the higher the voice, the slower the delivery tempo must be to retain clarity.
Not surprisingly, Knapp's lower voice and slower delivery was more easily understood, while Murray's spirited, fluid performance added pizzazz.
The women's chorus, well rehearsed by director Karen Kennedy, sang with excellent balance, clean staccatos, and a maturely rounded sound.
Soloists Vicki Gorman and Malia Ka'ai, inexplicably placed far back between orchestra and chorus, were nonetheless audible, their warm, lyric sopranos floating sweetly. Why the program printed only half the chorus' and soloists' texts remained a mystery.
Throughout, the orchestra shone, the strings' ensemble in those scurrying passages especially clean. Ken Friedenberg, on French horn, gave a stunning performance, beginning with his long held accompaniment notes in the overture and culminating in extensive solos in numbers VII and VIII. Also, clarinetist Scott Anderson, accompanied by Marsha Schweitzer on bassoon and Stephen Dinion on timpani, created a charming "Funeral March" (why a funeral march would be charming being one of those Shakespearean twists).
The first "half" of the two-hour concert, comprising Strauss' first tone poem, "Macbeth," lasted only 20 minutes but packed the emotional wallop of a full half. Theater thunder and lightning made the audience jump as Murray and Knapp cackled witches' lines from Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and quickly summarized the plot. The orchestra then launched into Strauss' unrelenting angst: powerful, well-balanced brass choirs blazing, Stuart Chafetz's timpani thundering exuberantly, trumpeter Michael Zoneshine's hero's theme ringing out.
Ruth O. Bingham reviews classical music for the Star-Bulletin.