Dante-Symphonie - Orpheus

Description

This record highlights the magnificent Dante Symphony by Liszt, celebrating the bicentennial of his birth. In his Dante Symphony, Liszt wanted to evoke the three parts of the Divine Comedy: To guide us, like Virgil to Dante, from Hell to Paradise through Purgatory. The Inferno opens with a theme hammered out by the brass. It is the terrifying exhortation engraved on the gates of Hell: "Abandon all hope, you who enter." The orchestra deploys spectacular effects to immerse the listener in the infernal pains and the whirlwind of torments. In the Purgatorio, the place where souls await their Salvation, Liszt develops misty harmonies, in half-tones, which ultimately brighten to lead to the Magnificat, the ultimate "Vision," that of Paradise, which bursts forth luminous like a theophany, with the choir of angels. It has been said that on Wagner's advice, Liszt did not compose the Paradise. This is inaccurate. In reality, he composed a Paradise in accordance with the subtleties of the Divine Comedy and the theology he knew perfectly. The first title of the Magnificat was indeed Vision: Liszt knows that at the end of Purgatory, Dante is offered the opportunity to contemplate Paradise, and that then, time and space disappear. It is an immaterial and ecstatic place. And this is ultimately what these extraordinary pages suggest, made of the subtle rustling of instruments forming a transparent microtexture, a luminous carpet that could represent the luminescent whisper of the seraphim's wings on which the angels sing their canticle to the Virgin.