Francesca Rimini

Paavo Järvi, Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich since October 2019, here launches a complete recording of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, the first in both his rich discography and that of the Swiss orchestra: ‘When I think of the Fifth Symphony, I think of vulnerability and hope. It looks directly into our soul. It is perhaps the finest of his symphonies. The famous horn solo moves me and enriches me every time I hear it . . . Unlike the Sixth, the Fifth still holds out hope for life.’ The symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini op.32 completes this programme. This dark and violent ‘symphonic fantasy after Dante’, a drama of jealousy, was premiered in 1877, at the same time as Swan Lake.

Composed in 1888 the Fifth Symphony is generally considered to be the most attractive of Tchaikovsky’s major works. When he first began writing the symphony he was suffering from a deep depression. However, he moved to the countryside and his state of mind became much more relaxed, enjoying the peace and quiet, gaining a new-found pleasure from his garden. This E minor Symphony reflects all the violent and conflicting emotions that he was experiencing at the time of its composition.

It is a story made for the stage: Francesca da Rimini is a deceived woman-in-love who disregards her arranged marriage, decides that she has the perfect right to true love, and ends up murdered. Dante originally wrote a few verses on this subject, but some decades later Boccaccio expanded the sketch into a tale containing all the ingredients of a genuine tragedy. In 1901 Gabriele D'Annunzio drew on this material to pen a scandalous fin de siecle drama.

Zandonai’s most popular creation “Francesca da Rimini” was commemorated in Macerata, the provincial capital of the northern Italian region of Marche, in 2004. Massimo Gasparon (former assistant to the celebrated scenographer Pier Luigi Pizzi) was responsible for the direction, set and costumes of this production for the Sferisterio Opera Festival. With its all-star cast including Daniela Dessì and Fabio Armiliato as the passionate lovers (the singers are regarded as two of the leading interpreters of Italian soprano and tenor roles respectively, both hail from Genoa and are in fact also real-life partners) and the baritone Alberto Mastromarino as the ideal “villain”, the production follows in a long line of significant post-war performances of Francesca da Rimini. The Sferisterio – a 4,500-seat arena originally used as a venue for the traditional ballgame gioco del bracciale (a game played with spiked arm protectors and a heavy wooden ball) – was built between 1819 and 1829; since 1921 it has been home to the annual opera festival held in late July/early August. As has come to be associated with staged events in Verona, the representative open-air nature of the performance turns this lavishly costumed production in a historic setting into something out of the ordinary.

Paavo Järvi, Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich since October 2019, launches a complete recording of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, the first in both his rich discography and that of the Swiss orchestra.
Jarvi writes: ‘When I think of the Fifth Symphony, I think of vulnerability and hope. It looks directly into our soul. It is perhaps the finest of his symphonies. The famous horn solo moves me and enriches me every time I hear it . . . Unlike the Sixth, the Fifth still holds out hope for life.’