Pelleas und Melisande

No fewer than four great composers - Fauré, Debussy, Schönberg and Sibelius - were inspired by Maurice Maeterlink's play Pelléas et Mélisande (1892). While in 2024 we celebrate the anniversaries of Fauré and Schönberg, Paavo Järvi presents here his interpretation of their settings of Pelléas et Mélisande with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, of which he was music director for nearly ten years. Debussy was so preoccupied with his own opera staging of Pelléas et Mélisande that the famous English actress Mrs Patrick Campbell approached Gabriel Fauré to write incidental music for the play; this music subsequently became a four-part orchestral suite that is considered Fauré's symphonic masterpiece. In 1902, Schönberg followed the advice of his admired role model Richard Strauss and composed his own symphonic poem on Pelléas et Mélisande. The complex combinations of musical motifs and the rich texture of the large orchestra captivate us not only, but also reveal his own vision of this archaic yet universal story.