NOSPR / Klauza / The Magical World of Tales and Toys - NOSPR

On the eve of a holiday dedicated to children, Engelbert Humperdinck arrives with a gift: a musical fairy tale for – as he insists – everyone. The story of Hänsel und Gretel had been recorded by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, but it was the composer’s sister, Adelheid Wette, who shaped it into a libretto nearly a century later, as the 19th century gave way to the 20th. The opera had its première in Weimar in 1893. From the first chorale for wind instruments, the overture introduces the audience to an enchanted world. Though Humperdinck composed at a turn of the century, he remains a Romantic at heart.

The subsequent compositions prove conclusively that a streak of Romanticism is inherent in children’s literature in every musical era. In Toy Symphony attributed to Leopold Mozart – though also credited at times to Joseph Haydn or his brother – it is the avian and quasi-toy sonorities that conjure a sense of Romantic fairy-tale imagery through the chirping of cuckoos and quails or the sound of bells and rattles. A similarly magical avian world is evoked by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi in his Baroque-inspired suite Gli uccelli (The Birds) of 1927. And Henryk Czyż demonstrates that playing games is not just for children: his orchestral suite on the theme of Wlazł kotek na płotek reimagines this well-known nursery tune in the style of Handel, Mozart, and Weber, in the rhythm of a military march, and in the spirit of an American foxtrot.

Maria Wilczek-Krupa

Concert duration: aprroximately 60 minutes 

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