Night Ride of Faust and Mephistopheles [From the Opera "Faust"] - Havergal Brian скачать в хорошем качестве

Night Ride of Faust and Mephistopheles [From the Opera "Faust"] - Havergal Brian

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Garry Walker I - Vivo: 0:00 Goethe’s "Faust", perhaps the iconic key-work of literary Romanticism, was one of the texts that most profoundly stirred Brian’s imagination. It was a principal source of inspiration for his immense First Symphony, the Gothic, which bears on its title-page a couplet from the final scene of Faust, Part II. Brian oten said that Part I of he Gothic was "largely coloured" by Faust, Part I and that he had originally intended to set ‘a large portion of the last act’ of Faust, Part II in the symphony’s choral finale. Brian, particularly at the time he composed the Gothic, felt a strong personal identification with the figure of Faust, and especially that aspect of Goethe’s character through which the whole two-part drama is a symbolic representation of the nature of western man in his ceaseless quest for knowledge and thirst for experience. His actions and passions will always result in error and crime, but they are also the result of the divine spark in human nature, which can be airmed as positive despite its negative consequences. Brian himself wrote of Goethe’s drama: "The idea behind Goethe’s Faust strikes at the very root of existence, and of good and evil. What do we know of these things? What do we know of the origin of life or what happens at death? Apart from the faith of the Western churches, both Eastern and Western cultures are strewn with endless epics inspired by these fascinating problems. Though the present age scorns the credulous and demands hard facts, every religion is based on the acceptance of the working of miracles by holy men. In the secular world, miracles are worked by magicians, sorcerers and witches, whose evil work is combatted by divine interference: hence the thousand and one legends to be found amongst the cultured and uncultured races on the miraculous. No modern play demands so much belief in the unseen world as Goethe’s Faust (Part II). This legend has been a magnet for the imagination and intellect of many poets and musicians, and some have attained the sublime in their pursuit and presentation of it, but if Faust teaches us anything it is the futility of seeking a solution to the mysteries of the unknown." It was in 1955–56 that Brian got round to setting Faust as an opera, in German, using his own detly slimmed-down version of Goethe’s text. Precisely what moved him to undertake this opera at that time is unknown. His three previous operas remained unstaged, and there had been no serious prospect of their performance since Fritz Busch’s abortive plan to produce "The Tigers" in German in Dresden in 1934. It seems he had made sporadic attempts to interest opera companies in them, but without success. Whatever the reason, he produced a highly impressive and dramatically swit-moving work: omitting the scene in Auerbach’s Cellar and the Walpurgisnacht, he concentrates on Faust’s pact with Mephistopheles and the Gretchen tragedy. Brian’s "Faust" consists of a Prologue and four Acts. In Scene 1 of Act 4, Faust learns that Gretchen has been imprisoned for the murder of her illegitimate child by Faust and has been condemned to death. He implores Mephistopheles to take him to her so he can set her free, and Mephistopheles agrees to befuddle the gaoler’s senses so Faust can get hold of the keys and free Gretchen. At this point the brief Scene 2 begins: Goethe describes the setting as "Night – Open Field"; Faust and Mephistopheles are seen racing by on black horses. In Goethe’s text they have a few lines of dialogue, for they see a coven of witches performing mysterious rites around a gallows tree. These lines Brian dispenses with, keeping the Night Ride as a purely orchestral piece. Starting in a choppy 12/8 time, this introductory portion lings the listener in medias res at a key moment in the drama, urgent and fragmented in its textures. Very soon; when Mephistopheles has mentioned his "magic horses", the music is invaded by a galloping rhythm that carries it up to the beginning of the Night Ride itself, heralded by a quietly thrumming timpanisolo. There is little thematic work per se, though some motifs do recur: the music is carried by the constant changes being rung on the galloping 12/8 rhythms, scored at first for comparatively small ensembles, with restrained dynamics and spooky sonorities. Given that there is plenty of work for percussion, the efect is almost of a toccata for orchestra, sometimes more polyphonic in texture, sometimes topped of by lurries of high woodwind or hard-edged, glinting writing for brass, xylophone, glockenspiel and the two harps. The pace slackens momentarily and then the music presses switly on to a crescendo that is abruptly cut of. In a sudden cessation of motion there is a coda in which the strings, two sets of timpani, and organ pedals hold on to a long, cavernous bare-fith on D, a blackness into which solo woodwind vanish in a final, precipitous descent.