* That's newspaper speak for: New Music Director for the Brooklyn Philharmonic: Michael Christie!
Michael Christie begins the his second concert as the new Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic with a Mozart curiosity, or rather after hearing it, a Mozart gem that needs to be better understood and more often programmed: Thamos King of Egypt.
The libretto's Freemason symbolism aside (shades of the di Vinci code?) the 17 year old Mozart's inspired choral music and the orchestral interludes gives us a feeling for drama that points the way to the Magic Flute and Don Giovanni. A brief history of the composition can be found with our interview with Michael Christie. Mr. Christie has been involved with paring down the text of Thamos, for this concert performance, which is a good thing (the pairing down), because brevity will serve the music and will still give us a feeling for the text's Masonic tinged language and imagery. Incidentally Mozart did not compose an overture to Thamos (strictly speaking), but he later added on Symphony No. 26, K. 184 as the opener.
Also on the program is the popular arrangement for strings of Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110, known as the Chamber Symphony Op. 110a. Also Schnittke's Moz—Art à la Haydn. Schnittke used sections and ideas from both composers, including borrowing a Haydn schtick, the “farewell.”
Brooklyn Philharmonic
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Saturday, April 1st at 8:00 pm
Michael Christie, Conductor
The New York Virtuoso Singers, Harold Rosenbaum, Director
Schnittke: Moz—Art à la Haydn
Shostakovich: Symphony for Strings
Mozart: King Thamos (complete)
Narrative adapted by Michael Christie
