"Daydreams and passions": Gergiev transports the Auditori

Seized by a strangely pleasant disbelief, we occupied the seats in the first amphitheater assigned to us, at a distance from other small groups of spectators. The main hall of the Auditori was half-empty or half-full, depending on how you looked at it. Something rare under normal conditions, considering it was the Ibercamera International Orchestras series, which usually enjoys customary success in attendance. In the current situation, the surprise can be related to the privilege of being able to attend a concert of this magnitude. To compensate for capacity limitations, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra of Saint Petersburg, under the direction of the charismatic Valery Gergiev, had scheduled two successive sessions, both dedicated to Wagner and Berlioz. The first of these began at 6:00 PM, an unusual hour, which contributed to that dreamlike sensation, which the musical event would soon confirm.

The ability to transport us to another place ---even if it doesn't physically exist--- is one of music's most surprising characteristics, and perhaps one of the reasons we return to it. For to absent ourselves from the present, experiencing a much closer and more akin temporality, in connection with our own emotionsand therefore alien to the aseptic way of calculating the passage of time. Saint Augustine's intuitions have been validated by neuroscience. Joaquín M. Fuster, inThe Magic Loom of the Mind, explains that "due to the parallelism between language and music in terms of temporal structure, as well as cognitive and emotional content, both activities share the same nervous substrate." Different areas of the brain ---in wonderful and enigmatic correlation--- are responsible for musical pleasure. From the most primitive, linked to emotions and instinctive responses ---the so-called "limbic brain"--- to the most sophisticated: this is the case of the prefrontal neocortex, which allows us to draw plans, create expectations, or anticipate responses to the scenario that is glimpsed.

Nostalgia, that pain for the distance of what is close to us, prepares its flight from the first notes of the Tannhäuser overture. A reminiscent melody, punctually invoked by the brass, which will end up prompting the counterpoint flutter of the strings, confronted with a declamation ---that of that melody--- turned thunderous. Here are already enunciated the motifs that will elevate the reflections on the aesthetics of Richard Wagner's opera. And, yet, the disquisitions around the transgression of canons and the scandalous allusion to the place of alternative indoctrination, Venusberg, weigh much less than the emotional vicissitudes that accompany and modulate the particular, necessarily intimate listening: in whose company we witness it for the first time, with what complicity and puerile sarcasm we comment on it later, in love with life and with ourselves, with the illusion of building something authentic beyond or on this side of the stage, transgressing everything that seemed façade.

The first applause, after the overture, responded timidly to the delicious din perpetrated by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, who knows if as a sign of respect for the awakening of the respective reverie and the progressive return to a shared reality. The second work programmed, more extensive and no less programmatic, would be the Symphonie fantastique. Composed by Hector Berlioz after a romantic disappointment, not being reciprocated by the actress Harriet Smithson, this masterpiece of Romanticism represents a lavish display of expressive means and theatrical effects, with an orchestra rich in brass instruments, unusual winds ---the ophicleide and the serpent--- or the presence of two harps. Of course, the percussion also stands out, which accompanies in maddening counterpoint the medieval dies irae, with a deliberate stumble, like an anvil tearing the silence of the night. All this, to recreate the ups and downs of a love story ---that of Lelio, alter ego that inspires Berlioz's imagination--- with the obsessive allusion to the beloved through an idée fixe, which is musically recreated in each episode.

Composed by Hector Berlioz after a romantic disappointment, the Symphonie fantastique represents a lavish display of expressive means and theatrical effects

The narrative that pulls the strings of the Sinfonía fantásticait was in fact stated in the original program notes ---written by the composer himself--- that were distributed on the occasion of its premiere, on December 5, 1830. Initiated by the ambivalence of "Dreams and Passions" (Rêveries-Passions), continues with the intoxicating recreation of a dance, in whichsheappears. A bucolic scene then outlines the possibility of a carefree life. But it does not do so in the pastoral style, abounding in the Latin topos of thebeatus ille, but with a minimalist tone;transporting the listener to that magical moment, when dawn breaks and the possibility of the dream (of love) is close to being left behind. The irreversible nature of this change is concretized in the fourth movement, theMarch to the scaffold, when thealter egoof Berlioz assumes that impossibility with martial determination. A drug will be supplied that, instead of ending his life, will perpetuate even darker visions: the "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath Night.

The emotional impact, the emotional imprint that indelibly marks the psyche of the involved party ---here, the lover--- is projected and made visible everywhere, disrupting temporal linearity, in the form of ubiquitous and elusive visions, made of the same stuff as dreams. As neuroscience teaches, we not only see what we perceive, but we see what we project, according to what was previously felt. Stanley Kubrick, who in his posthumous Eyes Wide Shut ---whose script is inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Story--- resorted to Ligeti's Musica ricercata to suggest dramatic tension and lodge it in the viewer's psyche, had already used in the opening scene of The Shining the medieval melody inserted by Berlioz, anticipating the demonic effect (a melody, by the way, adapted by Wendy Carlos, the creator of many of the sonic mischiefs in A Clockwork Orange).

The emotional imprint that marks the lover's psyche is made visible everywhere, disrupting temporal linearity, in the form of visions made of the stuff of dreams

Although it is known that music does not convey stories, the intuition of the emotional conditioning it entails induced Berlioz to use it to exorcise his own romantic disillusionment, as Goethe had done fifty years earlier with his Werther. The sufferings, the crisis that the soul has experienced are sutured with the recourse to the artistic medium, which projects the creator with a new consistency and which enables, on the part of the listener, the possibility of making a parabolic awareness. In the best of cases ---as the one that has been narrated--- when the interpretation is vibrant, and triggers internal springs, one recognizes oneself affected by a reality that is never entirely external, but rather the opposite: unconscious projection that the emotional imprint makes, bringing together different times in the genuine experience of the present.

The interpretation of Berlioz's work originally titled Épisode de la vie d'un artiste, symphonie fantastique en cinq parties more than met the expectations of the Auditori audience. Many showed their enthusiasm, perhaps for having paused reality, for having returned us to the old way of enjoying and living music. The creators of such transport ---the musicians of the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev--- would ultimately offer a lively and substantial encore in terms of orchestration: the overture to the operetta Die Fledermaus, which with its carnival revelry sounded like a counter-image to romantic fatality. The expression of an unrestrained feeling ---for that very reason often parodied--- would be rediscovered the next day, January 22, on the same stage. An extraordinary concert ---unplanned, at the beginning of the season--- that included Tchaikovsky's no less evocative "Pathétique" and Rachmaninov's celebrated Piano Concerto No. 2.